


Let's Make It Up As We Go

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Calvin and Hobbes AU, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean sleeps with his limbs splayed out, blankets tangled up in his ankles.  Something presses him down, catches his heart in his chest--<i>are his bones going to break?</i>--as he opens his eyes.</p><p>Castiel looms over him, all tiger and toy, and the weight of xyr paw pushes Dean into the mattress. “Cas?” Dean says, voice all sleepy as he rubs his knuckles in his eyes. He pushes xem off, rubs his chest, the sweat from his skin causing the scratches left behind on his chest to sting, the vague mark of a print right over him, right over the center of him, like a stamp or a seal over the very core of him. “Why are you here?”</p><p>“I told you, Dean,” Castiel says. “Because we have work for you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Make It Up As We Go

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings:
> 
> Similar to the effects of Famine in "My Bloody Valentine," Castiel struggles with hunger, which frequently manifests itself as (nonsexual) affection for Dean. However, since it is portrayed as intimate and it is physical, I am tagging for super, super subtextual vore just in case. The bulk of the narrative does take place when Dean is six years old. Though I did not check the underage tick, their friendship is intimate, though it is not romantic nor sexual. 
> 
> Suicide/Death ideation.
> 
> This is not a John Winchester friendly story. CW for emotional abuse towards both Dean and Mary.
> 
> Minor Character Death
> 
> "Xe/xyr/xem" is a gender neutral pronoun
> 
> CW: Minor instances of misgendering (is not a focal point of the story)
> 
> CW: John's Alcoholism

 

 

 

Dean falls from his bed, landing hard on the balls of his feet, with his blue I wuv hugs shirt twisted along his side. His soft pajama bottoms, the ones splashed with tiggers bouncing and tiggers leaping and tiggers conked out in the grass, are wrinkled, one leg of which is shoved up over his knee. He flexes his bare toes, listens to the hard voice of Mom downstairs.  
  
It’s the tone she gets, the tone when she’s mad, hopping mad like she wants to bang all the plates in the cabinet, rattle the silverware in their drawer, and slam the pantry door so hard he’s surprised the wood doesn’t crack. Dean swallows, and his throat feels too big and his eyes feel funny as he slips out of his bedroom, sidling up to the banister until he sees the wedge of light from the kitchen, mom’s hand clutching the counter’s edge, the curled and knotted phone cord gripped tight in her fingers.  
  
Dean crouches to the floor, slips his legs through the wooden rungs, bare feet hanging in the dim light, face pressed against the rails like they’re a prison and freedom’s somewhere over there, a jump of pale light away.  
  
“--not a mistake,” she says.  
  
And he wonders what she’s talking about. If she’s talking about how he accidentally lost his book report. Or how he accidentally referred to his teacher, Ms. Collins, as an alien from planet Zork because gosh he hadn’t meant to have said it out loud but when Spaceman Spiff is on a mission, the great astronaut still looking for Major Tom, there is just no time to figure out what the heck seven plus three is.  
  
Besides, who cares?  
  
Or if she’s talking about how he had lobbed a blue balloon full of tap water at Jo Harvelle’s head because yeah. That definitely hadn’t been a mistake. Straight up malevolency, as Jo Harvelle had told him in no uncertain words as she pummeled his face into the grass until his nose was skidded green and he tasted dirt and, as he told her proudly just to hear her squeal with distaste, earthworm poop--but she just leaned close to him, whispering, as if that means shit, and even she looked proud as punch that she knew a bad word that Dean had wussed out of using in the first place.  
  
He lets out a huff of laughter, then stops when Mom cuts in again. “Don’t you dare, John, do you hear me, don’t you dare hang up that phone—“  
  
Silence, then a clatter as the phone falls from Mom’s hand, dangles from the curly-cued cord stretched taut, hanging and bumping with a dull thud against the cabinets.  
  
Dean pulls his feet from the air, knees to chest, rolls over on his side, then crawls down the stairs like a tiger prowling through the grass.  
  
He always gets carpet burn when he does this and it makes his knees so red, and his entire skin burns like every bit of it is crying out, I’m here, I’m here, listen to me.  
  
The linoleum is cold against his knees, and grime films his palms. He sees a cube of cut tomato forgotten on the floor, skin just beginning to shrivel. There’s lint and dust and a spider web clinging to the bottom corners as the dial tone from the phone’s mouthpiece flatlines on.  
  
Mom’s at the table, elbows on the surface—figures that she’s allowed to do that—head bowed, yellow hair hanging in curls around her face. Her slippered feet are tucked under the chair, and her robe is hanging open and she’s just wearing a tank top and her sweatpants, like she’s going to work out, but it’s midnight and nobody works out that late.  
  
Dean reaches for her, dirty hand on her knee, then on her lap, head forcing its way up from under her elbows. She gasps a little, and Dean just smiles up at her. “Hi, Mom.” The constant dial tone blips into a stuttered heartbeat.  
  
She blinks rapidly, like she’s got dust in her eyes, does that thing with her mouth where her lips roll in together, like she’s pinching them closed so she doesn’t say something dumb, like some of the kids did on the playground, like he did whenever he saw Meg come over with her words that never quite qualified as name-calling according to the teachers, even though Dean was pretty sure they made him feel small as a lego. But Mom just says, “Hey, baby,” as she runs her fingers through his hair. “What are you doing up so late?”  
  
“What are you?” Dean says because he’s not sure if he should mention the phone call. Mom said it wasn’t good to eavesdrop, even though Dean personally thought it was a highly useful skill to have.  
  
“Just talking to your dad.” Her face flinches, and Dean flinches with her. “Oh Dean,” she says, cradling his cheek.  
  
He pushes her hand away, climbs into her lap, wraps his arms around her neck. “Is he going to come back?” he whispers into her ear, the breath of his voice making her hair move, like he was the wind.  
  
The bleating phone goes dead, finally.  
  
“Of course, he’ll be back. Just not when we thought.” Dean buries his face in the curve of her neck. “Hey, Dean – do you remember when I read Narnia to you, and the kids asked that same question to Aslan?”  
  
Dean goes “mmph” into her skin.  
  
“And what did Aslan say?” Mom pauses, like she expects Dean to actually answer, but when he doesn’t, she goes on: “He said he’d be back soon.”  
  
Dean pulls away, hands still on her shoulders. “He said that all times were soon. Tomorrow could be soon. Next week could be soon.” He spread his arms wide. “A hundred zillion years could be soon.”  
  
“Well, we won’t have to wait that long,” Mom says. “Daddy won’t live that long.”  
  
Dean looks at her, but she just smiles. “Hey, baby boy – you hungry? You want a midnight snack?”  
  
“Ms. Collins says that midnight snacks are unhealthy and ought to be discouraged.”  
  
“And did Ms. Collins also teach you that there are exceptions to every rule?” Mom quirks her eyebrow at him, way up high so that it almost disappears underneath the curl of her bangs.  
  
Dean nods. “Like i before e except after c.”  
  
“Exactly.” She presses her forehead against his, then bops his nose with her finger. “Just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, all the crusts cut off, when momma says so.”  
  
Dean licks his lip and pretends he hears his tummy growl. “Do you say so?”  
  
Mary stands to her feet, taking Dean with her, and he clamps his knees around her waist. “The most definite so to ever so,” she says.  
  
She deposits Dean on the countertop, finally hangs up the phone, and he watches her open a brand new loaf, tucking the heel back into the bag because nobody likes the heel ick. Watches how familiar the butter knife is in her hand, how she can smooth the peanut butter and jam without ever catching on the fragile white bread.  
  
Not like when he tries, with moon craters torn in the soft bread, dollops on the counter, and how one side always had more peanut butter than the other.  
  
He beats a staccato rhythm against the cupboard with his heels, but stops when she hands him the sandwich with a flourish. He bites into it, feels the sweet pucker of the jam, the thick smoothness of the peanut butter filling his mouth, as he swallows it down.  
  
“Good?” Mary asks.  
  
Dean rubs his tummy. “Yeah. Super good.” He looks at the sandwich, at the way it curves in the shape of his jaws. “Everything’s going to be okay.”  
  
Mary doesn’t say anything, just moves in close, fixes the way his pajama bottoms are crooked around his legs. Her fingers are warm around his ankles as she kisses his head. “Of course,” she says, “of course it will be.”

 

 

 

Dad staggers in half an hour later, smelling of something sickly sweet and pungent that makes Dean’s mouth water. Mom just shakes her head, hands on her hips, telling Dean that it was time to go to bed—but only after he insists on licking the last of the jam from his fingers and from his lips—protesting when Mom scrubs his face clean with a washcloth that smells too strongly of soap—until he finds himself shuffled up to bed, blankets twisted around his legs, unable to keep still as he hears the flat bladed voices of his parents under his skin, wishing he could fall sleep. The floors creak as if people aren’t being careful where they step, like the third and fifth stairs creak when he tries to sneak down all stealthy like to break into the pantry for slivers of pie that’s Mom made (apple’s his favorite, though pie is pie and they all melt in his mouth with their sugar tart sweetness)—but when he peeks around the hem of his coverlet, the wool of the afghan that Ellen, their next door neighbor crotcheted, scruffing his cheek, there was nothing there. Then the closet door creaks open, but there’s nothing there too, just the empty mouth of the closet, waiting to swallow him whole if he closes his eyes.  
  
Dean blinks, rapidly, closes one eye to make sure it just isn’t some monster trick, some chameleon effect meant to fool him and lull him into a false sense of security. Looks in the mirror like Perseus but nope no one’s there. He reaches under his pillow for his nerf gun, clutches it in his small fist. Shouts, “Come on out! If you dare,” and he pretends the tremor in his voice is just that, the voice of a growing boy, and one day it’ll be as deep and commanding as Dad’s.  
  
One day, it’ll be a lion’s roar.  
  
When something clumps towards him, huddled in his blankets in the middle of the room, he’s ready, and when the door jerks open, blinding him with light, Dean squeezes the trigger over and over, releasing dart after dart, yelling “Bang, bang! You’re dead!” for added effect, and it’s not until his nerf gun clicks empty that he realizes that Dad’s glowering at him, that he’s been peppered with darts scattered at his feet, that his eyes, his medusa eyes cold as stone, glint in the light as he shakes his head, mouth open, tongue curling around his teeth. He jerks the door shut again and calls down the stairs, “Dear! Will you come up here for a minute and talk to your son!”  
  
And Dad doesn’t come back in even though Dean wants to say he’s sorry, wants to say goodnight, but then Mom knocks on the door and he says come in in a voice that sounds too small, blanket over his head. The bed dips with her weight, and the shadow-soft pressure of her hand in his hair.  
  
“Dad told me what happened,” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Dean’s voice is muffled, and he gets a tongueful of pillow. But he says, “I thought he was a monster. That there was one in the closet or under the bed or somewhere else.”  
  
Her hand stills in his hair. “What?”  
  
He rolls over, looks up at her, clutches her hand in both of his. “There were weird sounds. Creaky noises.” He swallows hard. “Weren’t you ever scared of monsters?”  
  
“Yeah. When I was little.”  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
Mom reaches for Dean’s nerf gun, sets it aside on the dresser. “Well, I didn’t shoot them with these.” She pauses. “In my day, we had rubberband guns. Stung like a bi—like anything.” She licks her lips. “But then my Daddy taught me how to look for monsters under the bed and how to scare them real good.” Pulling away from Dean’s hand, she slips to her knees on the floor and looks under the bed.  “Nothing here, baby.”  
  
“And the closet?” Dean asks, pointing.  
  
“Patience, young jedi,” Mary says, then bites her lip, flinching a little as she goes to the closet door, swings it wide, and rifles through the clothes hanging up there. “Nothing here. You’re safe. You’ll always be safe with me.”  She smiles at Dean, then goes to tuck him in. “And besides – didn’t you know that angels are watching over you? Over us all?”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah. Really.”  She kisses his forehead, but he clutches at her fingers as she moves to turn out the light. “Song?”  
  
Dean nods happily, settles deeper into his covers, and Mary whisper-sings, “Hey Jude” until he falls asleep.

 

 

At school, Dean’s day consists of avoiding Meg’s taunts on the playground and the ire of his teacher, Ms. Collins. It would be easier if he understood the point of word problems that detailed the dull story of two cars driving in opposite directions and opposite purposes to get to two opposite destinations, and to determine, from the information given, which car will arrive to their destination first.  
  
He stares, chews on his pencil, and fake-sneezes out a “Jo” that gets the attention of the blonde-haired girl next to him, bent low over her homework, pencil scribbling away, margins full of numbers and showing her work and a bunch of other things that Dean can’t quite decipher.  
  
She grunts, and Dean takes it as permission to continue. “What’d you get for number nine?”  
  
“A, none of your business. B. Have a little integrity, Dean.” She spares him a hard glance before dipping her head once more over her paper.  
  
Dean sighs, makes a face at his paper, then writes down: it is of certain opinion that it’s not the destination that matters, but the journey that takes you there. I find this scenario fails to account for variables that could affect the answer. For example, what if Car A encounters a dragon intended to strengthen the moral fiber of the individual in question. That is a very determining factor that should be taken into account. I refuse to answer the question on the grounds that not enough information has been provided.  
  
After class, when Jo asks him about it, he tells her, and she rolls her eyes before slugging him gently in the upper arm. “Ms. Collins is going to be so mad.”  
  
“She can bite me,” Dean says.  “Not literally. Just. Metaphorically speaking.”  
  
“Do you bite your thumbs at her?”  
  
Dean puts his thumb into his mouth, bites down hard enough to taste the salty sweat on his skin and the charcoal from when he scribbled his nails dark with his number two pencil. “Heck yes.”  
  
When Dean comes home, he pauses when he sees something orange sitting on the porch, sitting like whatever it is was waiting for him, and only him.  
  
(But who would wait for him? Because Mom is at work still, at Ellen’s Roadhouse.)  
  
So he creeps up, sees that it’s a stuffed toy, a tiger, and that it’s got bright blue button eyes that look a bit newer, a bit brighter than the rest of the toy, like the old eyes were torn off and someone sewed new ones on with black thread instead of blue thread like Dean woulda done, and the stitches are clumsy too, like someone wasn’t use to sewing.  
  
Like someone who didn’t know how to sew or didn’t even like sewing had taken the time to give this tiger brand new eyes.  
  
There’s a note pinned to the scruff of its collar: dean—I found this at a garage sale and I thought of you.  
  
Dean smiles, scrunches the note up into his pocket as he scoops the tiger up into his arms, and squeezes tight. “We’re going to be friends, aren’t we,” he whispers into a raggedy ear, “the best of friends,” as he takes out the key from his backpack, opens the door, locks it just like Mom had taught him to, and waits for his parents--or at least one of them--to come home.

 

 

Dean’s watching Star Trek with the stuffed tiger beside him, the one where Captain Kirk’s shirt gets ripped up. “What do you think,” Dean says, tugging at his shirt. “Do you think my shirt would tear like that?” And he spread the material smooth and tight against his chest, then looks once more at the screen at Captain Kirk, shirt torn straight across his chest, dust in his hair and blood on his cheek, and a phaser in his hand. “What do you think?” But before the tiger can respond, the door bell rings, and a fist on the door bangs. He jerks up, clutching his stuffed tiger to his chest, before scurrying towards the dining table, dragging one of the chairs, cringing at the scraping noise of wooden chairs against fake paneled floors, and pushes it right up to the door.  
  
“Let me in, Dean!” Mom says.  
  
Dean stands up on the chair, smushes his nose against the door so that he can get his eye right up into the peephole.  
  
Mom’s face is all contorted in the glass, and the wind blows her yellow hair like it’s a lion’s mane – like Dean imagines Aslan, singing the world to life and being. “Just a sec,” he shouts, scrabbling down again, still clutching his stuffed tiger around its neck, and twisting the handle to its unlocked position.  
  
“Oh you got the tiger,” Mary says, “I wasn’t sure you’d find it on the porch. I accidentally locked my keys in the house.” She rolls her eyes, shakes her head, scoops them from where they were still sitting on the coffee table, puts them with a jingle in her pocket.  
  
“I really love it,” Dean says, crushing the tiger to his stomach with both arms. Then, he stretches them out again, a plea for a hug which Mary gladly gives, even though Dean gives her a face full of svelte fur as Dean growls and roars and generally sounds like he’s hawking up a hair ball. “Tiger says hello too.”  
  
“Well, that’s very sweet.” Mary pushes the tiger aside, plants a kiss on Dean’s forehead. But Dean won’t let her go, not until she kisses the tiger too, because everyone deserves love, Mom, he says.  
  
So she does, and Dean watches tv while she starts to prepare dinner.  
  
Dean turns the tv down low so that he can hear Dad’s heavy step on the porch.  
  
Dad hasn’t been home for a few days. Mom told him he was working and that was why, but he wished that he didn’t work so much.  
  
None of the other kids’ dads did.  
  
When Dean hears the hum of Dad’s old Toyota – not like the gutter growl of Mom’s black impala – he’s already launching out of the seat, tiger tail swinging behind him, as he flings the door open, and he distantly hears Mom stumbling after him, but he can’t look back, not now, as he sees Dad’s boot grind into the crumbling cement of their raggedy driveway, the dirty cuffs of his jeans and the bend of his knee as he hauls himself out, cheeks ballooning out in a huffed sigh.  
  
But Dean doesn’t care, just runs out to Dad in his bare feet, never mind the biting pebbles, and presses in close to his Dad’s legs, arms wrapped around tight as they would go around his thighs.  
  
“Hey, Dean,” Dad says, prying him from him. “Big boy like you.”  
  
Mary comes up behind him, hands on his shoulders. “John.”  
  
Dad’s face twitches, but he just looks at the tiger. “Where’d you get that, huh?”  
  
“Bobby,” Mom says, and she steers Dean away from Dad, even though he’s looking up at her, about to go what the heck, Mom, but she keeps talking over him. “Dinner will be ready in about an hour.” She tousles Dean’s hair with her hand. “You did your homework?”  
  
Dean wrinkles his nose. “Well, I put it up in my room with the – intention – of doing it. At a later point in time.”  
  
Dad makes a snorting noise behind him, but Mom just says, “Why don’t you go upstairs and finish it up before dinner. That way your evening can be entirely free.”  
  
Dean’s eyes open, and his lips part as he says, “Free for dessert?”  
  
“Maybe if you’re good,” Mary says, guiding Dean towards the stairs. “If you need any help, you let me know, okay?”  
  
“Yes, Mom,” Dean says.  
  
He wants to imagine Mom as an evil alien leader intent on throwing innocuous spacemen who are just exploring the stars and strange planets they encounter into the brig, but he can’t quite manage it. Obviously, the evil Ms. Collins is entirely to blame for his about to miss another episode of Star Trek, and of course Mom is an unfortunate prisoner as well because instead of watching the episode, she just clicks it off, turns and asks Dad in a hard voice that makes Dean stomach knot up, the kind of ruler-edged tone that spurs him to climb the stairs two at a time, “Where were you?” and he tries to shut the flimsy-thin door against his Dad’s answer.  
  
Their voices are quiet at first, and punctuated with the slam of a dish. Then they rise, and even Dean cannot pretend that the strick of his pencil is enough to muffle the sound of their shouts (words unintelligible), and he wants to come down and wrap his arms around his mother and say that he still loves her and he wants to ask his dad why are you gone all the time, don’t you see?  
  
But he doesn’t. He abandons his homework and he crawls into bed, clutching his stuffed tiger, and pulling the covers up over his head. He squeezes his eyes shut, and says, please god, make them stop. Make them happy again. Let them see it’s going to be okay. Don’t you hear? Do you hear me? Do I need to shout? Because don’t think that I won’t open the window because I will—  
  
He kicks back the covers—“Aren’t you listening!” throws his tiger against the wall, ignoring the hollow rattle as the toy’s glass blue button eyes collide against the white plaster, and the soft whump as it falls to the floor.  
  
Dean swallows hard, shaking. Neither of his parents had heard him, and neither had God, so he rubs his heels into his eyes, turns away, and cold seeps into his blood and his mouth drops open as he sees his tiger sitting on the bed. “Hello, Dean,” the tiger says.  
  
When Mom calls Dean down for dinner, he brings the tiger with him, cradling him in his lap. “Would the tiger like some too?” Mom asks, cutting Dean’s steak into bite-sized pieces for him, smiling even though Dean doesn’t see it in her eyes.  
  
“Name’s not tiger,” Dean says. “And no. xe’s not hungry.”  
  
John scoops mashed potatoes onto his plate.  
  
“You named him then?” Mary says. “What is it?”  
  
Dean sneaks a cube of meat into his mouth and, tongue wet with warm juice, shakes his head. “Not a him. But xe told me xyr name. Castiel.” Dean gazes down at the tiger’s head. “Xe told me xe was an angel of the lord. Isn’t that swell? Because it’s just like you said,” and he slips his hand into Mary’s palm.  “Angels really are looking over us.”  
  
~*~  
  
Dean sleeps with his limbs splayed out, blankets tangled around his ankles.  Something presses him down, catches his heart in his chest-- _are his bones going to break_ \--as he opens his eyes.  
  
Castiel looms over him, all tiger and toy, and the weight of xyr paw pushes Dean into the mattress. “Cas?” Dean says, voice all sleepy as he rubs his knuckles in his eyes. He pushes xem off, rubs his chest, the sweat from his skin causing the scratches left behind on his chest to sting, the vague mark of a print right over him, right over the center of him, like a stamp or a seal over his very core. “Why are you here?”  
  
“I told you, Dean,” Castiel says. “Because we have work for you.”  
  
Dean laughs, rolls his eyes. “But what kind of work? Because, you know –“ and he bounces up and down on the bed, the toy tiger following suit even though the blue eyes aren’t smiling like Dean knows his are – “Dad is always trying to make me clean up my room or take out the trash or sweep the floor or do the dishes.”  
  
“Do you?” Castiel asks. “Like a good son?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “Yeah.” He lands on his butt on the bed, bounces half-heartedly. “He says that it’ll build moral character. But I don’t know, I always feel the same.” He undulates on the mattress, a swooping, hollow feeling in his gut. “You know, I’d figure I have lots of moral character by now. But he still says the same thing—like I’ll never have enough.” He folds Castiel in his arms, squishing xem tight, glad that there aren’t any real bones to break or muscles to hurt or skin to bruise. “What do you think about that?”  
  
Castiel tilts xyr head, glass eyes transparent and unblinking, deep and endless like  skies even though Dean knows they’re just shallow glass buttons painted blue with paint that’ll chip as he grows up. “I think that you are the Righteous Man.”  
  
Dean rolls over onto his stomach, propping his chin up with his fists, knees bent so that his feet can trace circle-eights in the air. “What does that mean?”  
  
Castiel says nothing, slips out a rough pink tongue, licks xyr nose. “It means you’re special, Dean.”  
  
Dean bows his head, smiles soft in the open cradle of his palms. “Yeah – but, how do you know?”  
  
Something hummed in Castiel’s throat—a growl or a purr, Dean can’t be sure. The ribbon of something that goes taut under his skin, puckering his neck with goosebumps, and a chill that burns straight through the center of him, is enough for Dean to want to hear it again.  
  
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”  
  
The word comes up somewhere from his stomach, small and sharp like a needle popping out all the air in his lungs. “Oh.” His feet stilled, then fell with a whump to the bed. “So why are you really here then?”  
  
Castiel’s great throat rippled up and down. Xe’s mouth opens slightly, and Dean shivers at the sight of xyr fangs. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“Well like,” Dean says, flipping over onto his back, feet on his pillow, hands clasped behind his head. “Sometimes when Dad comes up here—I used to think he wanted to see me you know? He’d sit on the bed, but not really on it. And his hands wouldn’t sit still and his eyes were always eying the walls and my dresser, like h was looking for something.” Dean looks over at the half empty jar of pennies and nickles and dimes on his dresser. “Like I don’t keep quarters in there anymore because sometimes when I got home from school my jar would have no more quarters and one time—we didn’t have enough quarters to do laundry. So now I keep my quarters in a special place,” Dean whispers, hand buried in Castiel’s thick scruff. “So the next time Mom runs out of quarters or forgets—“ he hooks his fingers into air quotes—“to bring them, we’ll still be okay.”  
  
“You’re asking me,” Castiel says, “if I’m here for your quarters?”  
  
“I guess. Or. Whatever angels need. In place of quarters.”  
  
“We would never ask of you what you’re never willing to give. We’re angels. You have to say yes.”  
  
Dean closes his eyes, breaths in deep before huffing it out. “You promise. Cross your heart and hope to die promise?”  
  
Castiel settles in close to Dean, jaws resting on his paws, pink nose inches from Dean’s ear so that he felt the whispering wind of xyr great breath, and goosebumps dotted his neck.  
  
“Angels don’t die, Dean.”  
  
“Mom says everybody dies.”  
  
Even in the dark, the blue of xyr eyes is undimmed, and Dean can’t stop looking at them. “Do you think she shares all her knowledge with you, Dean?”  
  
“Sometimes she says there are some things that are for grownups.” Dean shrugs. “But life and death is for everybody why would she lie about that?”  
  
Castiel stretches, and xyr paw touches Dean’s shoulder, a hint of claw, just barely unsheathed. Dean can feel the tug of them through his t-shirt, and he wonders if he should roll away, but the paw is warm, heavy but not too heavy.  
  
“Maybe I should ask her?” Dean says.  
  
“Your mother has good reason not to tell you,” Castiel says.  
  
Dean tilts his head back so his eyes roll up towards the ceiling. “But I should know. I mean, moms are supposed to let you know about the world so that we can navigate it. Like, how can I make sure I find the right port if my map is missing key information?”  
  
“Not everything is about you. And you have me to tell you that not everybody dies. That’s all you need know.”  
  
Dean rolls over onto his side, flops his arm around Castiel’s shoulders, fingers tracing a black stripe.  
  
Castiel glances down at xyr arm, at xyr fingers, stiffening a little underneath Dean’s weight, pink nose wrinkling as Dean shifts himself so close his soft breathe-in- breathe-outs ruffles xyr whiskers.  
  
“Are you sure?” His words are mumbled, soft and heavy in his mouth.  
  
“Go to sleep, Dean.”  
  
And Dean does, eyes fallen heavy, glad that so close to Castiel, xyr tiger body huge and long, heavy with beating blood and hot breath and a rumbling in xyr throat that should sound threatening to Dean but somehow isn’t, he can no longer hear his father’s heavy voice, broad as the palm of his hand, or his mother’s voice pushing him back and back.

 

 

 

Dean insists on bringing Castiel with him to school. Mom tries to stop him, but he hugs him tight, backpack slipping from his shoulders to his elbows. “You said that angels were watching over us and now that there is one, you want me to leave xem in my room?”  
  
Mary frowns, bites her lips, gets on her knees before Dean so that he doesn’t have to look up at her. “No. I’m just saying—what if Castiel gets dirty? What if Castiel gets lost? You wouldn’t want that to happen, do you?”  
  
“I’ll take good care of xem, just like xe takes care of me,” Dean says. “Xe says I’m special,” and he nestles his chin onto Castiel’s head as Mom tightens his backpack straps.  
  
“Whatever you want, baby,” Mom says.  
  
Dean smiles, triumphant, at Castiel. “Told you,” he says.  
  
They wait together for the bus at the corner. Castiel, tail curled tight around xyr haunches, licking a paw with a scrape of pink tongue, says, “As a multi-dimensional wavelength of celestial intent, I don’t need to be physically present to—watch over you.”  
  
Dean slides his eyes towards Castiel’s, blinking away the sun that shines from xyr blue button eyes, burning scathing purple blotched polkadots into his eyelids. He shields his face with his hands, and says, “Yeah but, isn’t it better this way?”  
  
The bus pulls up, and Dean hauls Castiel after him, finding a place in the very back. Nose pressed against his glass, breath fogging up the window, Dean says, “If I prayed you to destroy the school so that I wouldn’t have to go anymore, would you?”  
  
Castiel’s “No” is firm and unyielding as any word of God should be, so Dean slumps back in his seat, counting the minutes until he can toss his stuff onto the floor and run around in the yard until his heart burns in his chest and the only thing he can smell is green grass and dirt and bug guts instead of the stale air and stale sweat of his fellow classmates.  
  
Dean suffers through class in silence, scrawling drawings of dinosaurs crashing through urban neighborhoods, rooftops splintering under their clawed feet, and Dean himself, also a dinosaur, a deanosaur, roaring, snapping up the cars and the wooden walls and all the teachers who told him what to do, what to think. In block letters, shaded and lit, he writes, I AM THE DEANOSAUR RAWR until a hand, fingernails painted black, each finger sporting a silver ring, reach out to rotate it, and Dean glares at Meg, at her curly hair falling over her face, at the way her lips purse into a rosebud as she says, “Oh. Isn’t that cute? You know how to pun,” and she laughs at him.  
  
And Dean can’t do anything because Ms. Collins shifts her glare at to him, and he can’t get sent home from school today with a note he just can’t, and so Dean dips his hand down to Castiel still stuffed in his back pack, squeezes the scruff of xyr neck, and bites his lip as Ms. Collins tells them to practice their paragraphs by writing about past times they do with their dads.  
  
They get up, they pick up their stuff, and Dean just wants to get away but no, that’s impossible, because Meg and Ruby are there, shadows of the other, blocking his way.  
  
“Get out of my way,” Dean says.  
  
“I know you’re the one who put that worm in Ruby’s lunch box,” Meg says, voice slipped low and hard. “Not cool.”  
  
“How’d you guess? Did she go running home to daddy?” Dean says.  
  
“Like to see you do that one, Deano,” Meg says, gnashing her teeth and growling at him, fingers all bent into tiny t-rex arms. “I guess it’d be easier if he was actually home, right?”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean says, using his quiet, in doors voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My daddy works hard.”  
  
Meg pushes herself against his shoulder. “Hard chugging it down in the bars, you mean.”  
  
Dean glances down at his feet, hating that his face is twisting up into some kind of smile, tongue licking his lips, slicking the way for him to just grin and bear it already gosh darnit, like the way Mom sang that song to just smile, and then he forces himself to lift his head, to find her eyes, and say to her face, “Well, at least my daddy comes home on the weekends.” He juts in close, nudging right into her personal space. “Where’s yours? Oh that’s right—you don’t know. Because you’re adopted.” He shakes his head, breath hard in his mouth, chapping his lips, ignoring the way Ruby slides in close to Meg, slings her arm around her neck, fingers clutching at the loose collar of her cut-off t-shirt as she hisses something that vaguely sounds like Shut your mouth. “Do you even know how your real dad looks like? Or do you need a picture?”  
  
Her face flickers. “My daddy’s a hero. And when he comes home, he ain’t ever gonna leave. Not like yours, Deano. Saturday night is gonna be family night, not cry in my icecream because my parents are too busy yelling at each other into the phone night.”  
  
Something cold coils up tight in his stomach, and he hisses out, “I’m going to tell Castiel to eat you.” He tries to lower his voice, just as low as Dad’s could go. “Just you wait.”  
  
Meg slips away from Ruby, sidles in a little bit closer, eyes a narrow slit. “Castiel, huh?”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Xe’s fierce. Gonna gobble you up if you don’t shut up.”  
  
“I’m so scared,” Ruby says, lunging in close, arms and shoulders loose, face twisting up into a grin that pulls her lips back from her pale-pink gums. “Does xe have as many teeth as I do?” She snaps her jaws shut with a loud snap, licks her lips, drags her wrist over her mouth. “Yum.”  
  
Meg pouty-faces at him. “That’s so adorable—that you need a tiger to fight your battles for you.”  
  
She lunges for Castiel, but Dean slaps her hand away, dodges, side-steps his thigh into a desk corner. He wonders if it’s gonna bruise.  “Xe’s not a tiger—xe’s an angel. Got eyes everywhere. And mouths too.”  
  
“Everywhere? Even here?” and she pokes Dean in the stomach, just right there above the navel, hard, giggles like the cookie dough kid in the blue sailor hat, dances away.  
  
Dean drudges up something his dad would say, every time a neighbor mowed the lawn at six a.m. in the morning, or when the paper boy missed the step and he had to get his hand dirty and muddy digging around for it in the shrubbery. “You son of a –“  
  
Meg gasps, audibly, a fake gasp that cuts Dean off midsentence, as she places her finger over her lips. “Don’t make me tell on you now, Deano. We might be finding your fossils a hundred years later if the teachers hear you saying those bad bad words.” Then she saunters in close, all swagger and her other dad’s stolen cologne, scoffing in his face. “Your tiger doesn’t have the stomach for me—isn’t that right, Clarence?” And then she’s gone with Ruby, arms slung around their shoulders, and Dean can still hear their laughter down the hall.  
  
“Why didn’t you do something?” he says to Castiel, as he trudges down the hallway.  
  
“Do what, exactly?” Castiel says.  
  
“She was talking dirt about my dad—he doesn’t deserve that—not from, not from someone like—Meg—who doesn’t even have a real dad.”  
  
“She has a father,” Castiel says. “Everyone does.”  
  
Dean’s real quiet, shuffles his feet against the linoleum.  “What about your dad? Where’s he?”  
  
Castiel’s eyes glint especially blue, Dean thinks, and xe licks xyr tiger chops with xyr great pink tongue, like xe’ll find the answer written on xyr face and hey, maybe so, maybe it is there written for Dean to say because aren’t angels the word of God anyway and maybe Dean should be able to read them like an open book.  
  
“Around,” Castiel says.  
  
“Around where?”  
  
Dean doesn’t think Castiel is going to answer him, because xyr starts to lick their paw, shinying up the black stripes, giving the velveteen fur a rubbed up sheen. But then xe says, “Haven’t you heard the word omnipresence?”  
  
Dean postures himself, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”  
  
“It means our father is everywhere. All around us,” Castiel says.  
  
“Then you must have seen him, right? Seen his face?”  
  
Something more growl than purr rumbles from Castiel. “I have faith.”  
  
Dean clutches Castiel to his chest, fingernails finding a better grip in the seams. “Me too. Daddy said we’d be having pizza—not frozen or homemade pizza but you know, take out pizza—while we watch Star Trek. Doesn’t that sound great?”  
  
Castiel says nothing, so Dean nudges xem, pretends to snap at xyr ear with his teeth. “Doesn’t that sound great?”  
  
“I’ve never had pizza, Dean,” says Castiel. “I don’t understand.”  
  
Dean’s mouth drops open— “You’ve never? What? Oh heck no, that ain’t right,” he says, drawing himself up. “You’re having pizza tonight.”  
  
“I’m an angel, Dean. I don’t need to eat.”  
  
“But you’re a tiger!” Dean says, growling, curving his fingers into claws. “Tigers are always hungry for meat. For blood, even. Not that there’s blood in a pizza,” he whispers, “but you can always pretend the red sauce is blood if necessary.”  
  
“I don’t think it will be,” Castiel says, and Dean can’t figure out if he’s smiling but then, if angels don’t sleep or eat—can they actually smile? “You’re going to miss your bus.”  
  
And then Dean has to pound down the hall, sneakers skidding, backpack bouncing against his butt, barely making it just as the driver’s hand was hovering over the button to shut the yellow doors, except that Jo was asking just how, exactly, one drove a bus as opposed to a car and he just flashed her his grin when she shot hhim you so owe me eyes for stalling the driver so you wouldn’t have to walk.  
  
He offers her a half-sucked candy that tasted too much like cough syrup for his tastes, and she says, “Really, Dean, really?” But she takes it anyway and shoves it into her pocket.  
  
“You’re not gonna eat it?” Dean says. “I wouldn’t have given it to you if you weren’t gonna eat it.”  
  
“It’s not for me,” Jo says. She shakes out her blond hair. “It’s for a friend.”  
  
Dean laughs, and she punches him hard in the upper arm, hard enough to hurt real bad and to make tears smart in his eyes, so he cries “uncle” and they help each other do their homework all the long ride home.  
  
It’s not until he slams his way through the door, backpack swinging from one arm, and climbs the stairs to his room, that he notices that Castiel is gone. “Cas?” he says, looking around the room.  
  
But the bare walls stretch up higher than cathedral walls, and his room’s as empty as the church on that Tuesday morning he and Jo snuck in to try to find the communion wine.

 

 

 

He scoops out his books, lets them fall to the bed, bouncing against the mattress and then to the floor.  They fall like stunned birds, their pages flapping and bending and then finally still. He turns his backpack inside out, but there is no Castiel, no tiger, no angel, and Dean’s heart seizes in his chest because hadn’t xe said that xe would be there, that physical proximity didn’t matter to multi-dimensional wavelengths of intent?  
  
Mom had said that angels watched over them, and then he had met an angel, a real live angel in the—well, not the flesh, but definitely there—touchable.  
  
Dean stiffens his jaw, decides he’ll walk the entire way back to school to find Castiel. Perhaps even wavelengths needed help coming home.  
  
If Castiel was a stuffed toy and a tiger at the same time—was xe also a wavelength though?  
  
Was that even possible?  
  
Dean didn’t think it was and, the last time he had checked, stuffed toys didn’t have muscles or skeletons inside them, so if xe had fallen outside of his backpack on the side of the road somewhere, it was his responsibility to find him, to bring him back.  
  
He leaves a note on the refrigerator: Mom—gone hunting for Castiel. Be home for dinner.  
  
Pack a sandwich, one extra one for Castiel in case xe decided xe needed it because getting lost was hungry business (slather mayonnaise and mustard and tuna on bread and hope mom won’t notice the cans of tuna are missing) and then another one for himself to eat on the way because walking was hungry business and then one other for when he found Castiel because everybody knew it was awkward eating by one’s self.  
  
He passes by the Finnerman’s place, just there across the street, and Jael and Danny are swinging from the branches by their legs, squeezing the limbs between their thighs somersaulting through the air, and landing either on their feet or on their knees—and every time they did, they flung their arms around the broad trunk, fingertips scrabbling against the bark, struggling to reach and to touch and to complete the circle. He waves at them, but they don’t see, and he continues on.  
  
Halfway down the block, he can already hear Jo’s voice. “Is that you, Cas? Didn’t Dean—“ but he’s already sprinting down the rest of the way towards her house, sneakers slap-slamming against the pavement, the thud of his heart badumping in his ears and his chest against his bones because what the heck was Cas doing over there, at Jo’s house, when xe was supposed to be with him?  
  
He doesn’t knock on the door because Dean knows Jo, knows that she spends all her time out in the air with her feet bare until her soles turn to leather and he lets his bag drop to the ground (nevermind squashed tuna sandwiches) and scrabbles up their high wooden fence. Sure enough she’s there, just in her t-shirts and her shorts, flipping a knife in her hand because she thinks she’s some tough kid, and Castiel the stuffed tiger is plopped next to Jo’s velveteen rabbit that’s got a piece of half-sucked candy stuck to its smudged pink nose, both of them squished in two tiny doll seats in front of a plastic tea table devoid of tea cups and Jo’s just flipping and twirling that knife, completely oblivious to the fact that that’s Castiel,  that’s his Castiel and gosh what the crap was up with that?  
  
“Jo!” Dean shouts, scrambling up the rest of the way up the fence, scraping up his knees good until they’re smudged with blood, and then he just collapses in the grass, and Jo rushes over to him, but he pushes her hands away.  
  
He brushes off his backside, and he says, “What the—what the hell, Jo?”  
  
“What?” Jo asks, mouth open and eyebrows wrinkled up in her oh screw you look.  
  
“That’s Cas. That’s my tiger.” Dean goes up to xem, picks xem up, inspects xem for dirt. “Why didn’t you bring xem back? I would have brought yours back,” he says, pointing at the velveteen rabbit.  
  
It looked so silly with that candy stuck to its face.  
  
“Who says I wasn’t going to bring Cas back,” Jo says, eyes flicking to her bunny.  
  
“Oh yeah,” Dean says. “You’re definitely making returning him a priority.”  
  
Jo hurtles into him, pushing him to the ground, pressing him down by his shoulders. “Shut up, Dean Winchester! The world does not revolve around you.”  
  
Dean tries to buck her off, but she just sits on his stomach. “Get off me!”  
  
“Then quit yelling at me, oh my gosh. I thought we were friends.”  
  
“Friends don’t sit on each other,” Dean grunted.  
  
Then the air buzzes in his ears, presses him down harder than Jo, and something flashes before his eyes, many wings and shadows without anything to cast them, then the voice, a voice like Cas’s only different because it came from the bunny with the candy stuck to its face, “Enough.”  
  
Jo rolls away from Dean and he can breathe again. “He was being a jerk, An—“ and she tries to say something that sounds like vowels and an ‘l’ sound all got lumped together, but the syllables come out all wrong and she sticks out her tongue in frustration before she just says, “Anna, he was being a jerk.”  
  
“Your bunny can talk?” Dean says, eyes flicking from the rabbit to the tiger back to Jo again.  
  
“No,” Jo says, shaking her head. “Not the bunny. What you got? Spun cotton candy for brains?” And then she just exhales soft, looks at Anna like Dean thinks Mom used to look at Dad once upon a time.  “She’s an angel.”  
  
“Wh—what?” And Dean can barely get the word at, can barely take his eyes off the two stuffed toys just sitting there with their button eyes spun into spun glass, into suns like they’re more than anything Dean or Jo have ever seen, and he tries once more, “What? You have an angel too?”  
  
“Oh,” Jo says, “we both have angels.”  
  
Dean turns to Cas. “What? Nothing to say?”  
  
“Cas didn’t tell you about me?” Anna asks. She’s holding the candy in her paws now. There’s bits of grass and dirt sticking to the surface.  
  
“You didn’t ask, Dean,” Castiel says.  
  
“I thought you said that I was special,” Dean says, and he tries to keep his voice quiet, the words for Cas’s ears only, but he can tell by the way that Jo scrunches up her lip and grounds her toe in the dirt that she’s heard.  
  
“You are, Dean.”  
  
“But so is Jo,” Anna says. “You both are.”  
  
“What?” and Dean is a little surprised by how ugly his laugh sounds. “Like snowflakes or some—some bull—“ and the word feels good in his mouth, all hot and heavy on his tongue – “like how we’re all special snowflakes or something?”  
  
“No,” Anna says, but she doesn’t elaborate.  
  
Jo coughs, then says, “I’m hungry.”  
  
“I brought food,” Dean says. “Sandwiches. I dropped them though. Over the fence.”  
  
“Let’s go get them—“ and they both go to pick up their angels snuggled up close in their toys—  
  
but Castiel says, “Leave us—“ and there is a hint of a growl in xyr words, and Dean does not reach for xem again.  
  
They go the long way over the fence, trekking their way to the gate on the far side of the lawn because they’re both tired and they’re both short and the fence is tall.  
  
“Why is—Anna with you,” Dean finally says over the squeak of the gate as they tug it open.  
  
“I don’t know,” Jo says. “She didn’t say.” She frowns, sucks in her lip before letting it go with a pop. “I think I’m okay with that. We don’t all need a reason—do we?”  
  
Dean grunts, non-committedly.  
  
“Why? What did Castiel say to you?”  
  
“That there’s work for me,” Dean says. “But xe didn’t elaborate. I don’t know what it means. But it can’t be too bad, right?” and he flashes a grin over at Jo. “It’s good to be needed, right?”  
  
Jo shrugs. “I guess.”  
  
“Why, what did Anna say to you? The first thing she ever said?”  
  
Jo bends down to pick up Dean’s backpack. Slings it over her shoulder and Dean wonders if the sandwiches are still even edible, or if the sun has melted and spoiled everything.  She turns back to the house, shoulder blades sharp against her t-shirt, wind turning her yellow hair into a lion’s mane. Without looking at Dean, she says, “She told me that I was loved.”  
  
The “oh” that escapes Dean’s lips is the vague echo of all the air being smacked from his lungs.  
  
When Dean returns home, Mom’s holding the note he left on yellow sticky pad in her hand. He wonders if he imagines the fine shaking in her fingers, in her wrists, in the way her eyes flutter shut and side to side.  
  
She jumps when the door slams behind her, crumples it in her fist and stows it in her pocket.  
  
“Is Castiel okay?” she says, seeing the tiger folded over Dean’s elbow.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Cas is fine.”  
  
Mary’s lips twitch, and she says, “Where was he?”  
  
“Xe was with Jo.” Dean sighs heavily, flops in one of the dining room chair, legs swinging through the air, Castiel in his lap.  
  
“She didn’t bring him back?” Mary stands on her tiptoes, reaches for a Mr. Pillsbury Boy cookie jar, and hands Dean three chocolate chip cookies. “That surprises me.”  
  
“She would have,” Dean says. “But Cas wanted to stay and talk to Anna, I guess.” Dean looks down at Castiel, but Castiel remains unblinking, tail just barely flicking xyr haunches.  
  
Mary’s stills, a cookie halfway to her mouth. “Who’s Anna?”  
  
“Mr. Buns,” Dean says. “I guess—“ and he licks his lip, scrunches his nose a little—“I guess Anna’s Jo’s angel. Because she’s special too.”  
  
“What’s up with the angels, baby?” Mary says. “Is this something to do with church? Do you want to start going again?”  
  
Dean laughs. “Why would I want to go to church when I’ve got an angel right here?” He holds Castiel out to her, and Mary makes no way towards the stuffed toy. She just stares.  “Anyway,” Dean says, shrugging, “Castiel told me that she was xyr sister—youngest sister.”  
  
“How—large—is Castiel’s family?” Mary asks, wiping her palms down the thighs of her pants.  
  
She opens the refrigerator, and Dean hopes she’s going to have something good for dinner, something meaty that he can rip between his teeth because gosh he’s hungry, hungry like he hasn’t eaten in days, hunger dull and sharp and aching like the splinter shoved up under his thumb nail, a hunger that has scooped him hollow. But instead he looks at Castiel cradled in his arms, and he asks Cas.  “Lots,” Dean says. “They’re like the stars.”  
  
Mom’s throat works up and down hard, and Dean thinks that maybe, just maybe, the onion she’s chopping up with her great big butcher knife is biting too deep in the wood. “That’s not the angels,” she says. The slice of the knife cutting into the onion flesh and the scraping, scooping sound of it as she dumps it into the frying pan to sautee punctuate her words, and Dean can’t help flinching a little. “The sons of Jacob and Isaac are named after the stars. Are, in fact, more numerous than the stars. Not the sons of God. According to the Bible that is.”  
  
Castiel growls then, not the closed-mouthed growls from before, with just the hint of a fang, but a growl that came from jaws gaping wide, every fang shiny with spit, the pink tongue folded up and in, thin as a blade, and Dean doesn’t know much about big cats, but he’s pretty sure Castiel has more teeth than any other tiger he’s ever seen at the zoo, and that the claws digging into his thighs are tougher and huger and sharper and more, just more, so much more, and xyr scruff ruffles up into an orange flamed mane and Dean shakes to his bones, molars rattling at the force of xyr roar. “Mom,” he gasps. “Take that back.”  
  
“Why?” Mary says, her voice hard, knife chop-chop-chopping and Dean’s not sure if it’s the sting of the onions in his eyes or something else, but his eyes are wet.  
  
“Because,” Dean says, “it hurts. Can’t you hear?”  
  
Mary stops then, and Dean is relieved. Castiel stops too, and xe is still, still like the stuffed animal, still like xe was never anything more than fabric and cotton bound up with thread.  
  
“I don’t hear anything,” Mary says.  
  
“Not even before?”  
  
Mary shakes her head, finger curling tight around the knife, throttling the wood in a way that made goosebumps pepper Dean’s back. “No.”  
  
“Mom—“ Dean says, “Mom—you gotta say it.”  
  
“Say what?” Mary turns the stove on, knifes up a wedge of butter from the dish, scrapes the blade of it against the pan in a way that makes Dean flinch between his shoulders.  
  
“Sorry,” Dean says. He holds the tiger out to her. “You hurt Cas’s feelings.” Though, to be honest, cross his heart hope to die no crossed fingers or takebacks, if he was talking to Jo about it instead of Mom, he would have described it more like pee your pants righteous fury.  
  
But he didn’t think Mom would respond well to that.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Mary says, wiping her forehead with her wrist. “Are we talking about—Jacob and stars and sh—stuff?”  
  
“I think so,” Dean says. “Xe was so upset.”  
  
“Dean, I am not going to apologize to Castiel.”  
  
Dean bites his lip, swallows hard. “But you always tell us to say sorry if we hurt someone.”  
  
Mary turns the heat down, swivels to face them both. Licks her lips like she sometimes does when she’s trying to talk to Dad. “Castiel is a stuffed tiger.”  
  
“Xe’s an angel,” Dean says, simply.  
  
Mary heaves in one, two steadying breaths. “Castiel,” she says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Castiel does nothing, but when Mary asks, “Better now?” Dean says yeah, everything’s going to be fine, and he doesn’t even complain when Mom tells him to go upstairs and put his school things and Castiel away even though he wants to say that one doesn’t just put an angel of the lord away like xe’s an object, like xe’ll collect dust bunnies in xyr ears under the bed.  
  
It’s not until Dean stands up that Mary sees the holes in his jeans, the way sharp claws have shredded the threads that stretched across his thighs and down his knees, and at the smeared drops of blood. “Dean,” she says, stopping him by his shoulders. “What happened? This wasn’t here before.”  
  
And Dean just says, “Nothing, Mom, everything’s okay,” because everything was okay, because it wasn’t Castiel’s fault that xe was a tiger with terrible claws.  
  
Mom doesn’t say anything when she cleans him up with anti-bacterial gel and stretches a bandaid across the thin line of scratches along his skin. When she’s done, she cups his jaw in her hands, and Dean thinks they feel rough, like she uses them too much and no wonder, working at Ellen’s Roadhouse, washing dishes and scrubbing floors and counters and bathroom mirrors. “Better?”  
  
“It’s always been better,” he says, kissing her on the cheek, wrapping his arms around her neck.  
  
Dad comes home, halfway through dinner, reeking so sickly sweet that the smell of his words gives Dean a tang to his mouth. Mom just says, “John,” and Dad gets that hard set to his eyes because she didn’t call him Dad in front of Dean, and Dean keeps his eyes on his plate, pushing his green peas around with his fork.  
  
“Do you think we can talk after dinner, John?” Mom says, not looking up from her plate either.  
  
“About what?”  
  
“I have news.”  
  
John thunks his glass of milk on the table. “Well, can’t you say it now? Me and some of the boys had plans afterwards.”  
  
Mary shakes her head, scoffs. “Okay. If you want to have this conversation now.” She shakes her yellow hair back. “I’m going to have to pick up more shifts at the Roadhouse.”  
  
Dean lifts his head up, his eyes wide over the splashes of freckles across his cheeks. “Will I still see you?”  
  
“Of course, baby,” Mary says, but she’s not looking at him, just looking at Dad and he’s looking at her with his eyes so cold and gone Dean’s surprised they’re both not shivering under the intensity of it.  
  
“Go to your room, Dean,” Dad says and when Dean tries to tell him that he hasn’t finished his dinner yet, Dad just tells him to take it with him, to turn on the goddamned television and pretend that he’s at the movies or something.  
  
So Dean does. He makes a blanket fort and pulls himself in under it with Castiel in tow and he hears Mom and Dad down below, and they’re talking about bills and foods and weird kinda sounds that Dean doesn’t quite understand, and then he hears the inevitable sound of Dad slamming the door shut, and Mom—Mom shuddering in a breath. Dean squeezes his eyes shut before climbing out from under the blankets, tousled hair and bleary eyes, and he finds her just sitting there at the table, flipping a butter knife in her hand and he goes to her, he stands up on tip-toe so that he can reach her neck, so that he can slip his arms around her, and he says, “Dad still loves you, Mom.”  
  
But she just hugs him back, a little loose, and she kisses the top of his head, just missing the way his hair corkscrews into a cowlick, and says, “I know, Dean Go to bed alright? Sleep tight.”  
  
He’s almost asleep when he notices that his skin doesn’t hurt anymore, and when he peels off the bandaids, there’s nothing there—no scratches, no dried up blood.  “Thanks, Cas.”  
  
It takes a moment, but Cas says, eventually, “You’re welcome, Dean.”  
  
Dean’s almost asleep, when he distantly hears Cas say, “Though it’s hardly the raising of Lazarus.”  
  
Dean feels like he should remember what the heck Cas is talking about, but he doesn’t, so he just mumbles into his pillow, getting a mouthful of cotton and dried up spit almost tasting vaguely of the mint toothpaste Mom kept in the bathroom, “Shut up, Cas, and go to sleep.”

 

 

 

When Dean sees that Dad’s car is in the driveway after school, he goes to the backyard, lies flat on his back in the sun.  
  
But he can still hear his parents.  
  
“Make them stop, Cas,” he says. “Please make them stop.”  
  
“Do you want me to—eat them up?” Castiel flicks xyr eyes toward the windows.  
  
“No,” Dean says, kicking his feet against the lawn, tufts of grass spitting beneath his heels. “Make them love each other again.”  
  
Castiel bows xyr head over Dean’s, cradles his head in the hollow of xyr jaws. “Families will always fight each other, no matter what you do.”  
  
Dean buries his feet into Castiel’s fur. “What do you mean,” he says, voice muffled.  
  
“Don’t you read your Bible?” Castiel says, voice rumbling in xyr chest, thrumming against Dean’s skin so that he shivers.  
  
“Sometimes. Only when Mom makes me.” He stretches, muscles lithe, stretches like he’d seen Castiel do in the sun. “It’s kinda boring.”  
  
“That’s because you’ve never lived it,” Castiel says. “I was there at the beginning. I stood on the shores and I looked upon the fish, dragging itself across the sand, and I heard the voice of my sibling speak to me, Don’t step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish.”  
  
“How can a fish have big plans,” Dean says. “Fish don’t do anything. You just—“ he bites his lip, tries to remember what it was Dad always did when he dragged them on their camping trips. “Gut them and cook them and then eat them.” He gnashes his teeth like a tiger.  
  
“But the fish was you—human kind,” Castiel says.  
  
Dean props himself up on his elbow, head lolling back in the sun, slitting his eyes against the sun. “Oh, you mean like—evolution?”  
  
“Yes. Evolution.” Castiel is silent, before xe says, “But then Lucifer.” And xe stops once more, xyr pink nose pale and shiny in the sun, twitching, as xyr blue eyes cloud over.  
  
“Lucifer,” Dean breathes. “I remember Lucifer.”  
  
“He was the lightbringer,” Castiel says. “And he was my brother. And now—he is locked away.”  
  
“Like when Mom tells Dad to go? And she locks the door behind him?”  
  
“I suppose,” Castiel says.  “Only. He can’t come back in.”  
  
Dean pulls Castiel down on top of them, and they sprawl in the sun together. The dried up green grass pokes Dean in the small of his back, but he doesn’t care. “That sounds lousy.” They sit in silence, but it makes Dean itch, like his skin’s too small, so he just says instead, “So I’m guessing you were there for the dinosaurs, huh?”  
  
“Yes. I was. I watched over them, just like I watched over the humans.”  
  
“Did you forget to catch the meteor that made them all go extinct or whatever it is that killed them all?”  
  
“Of course not,” Cas says. “Everyone has a plan for them.”  
  
Dean’s stomach twists up, like it wants to throw up a little, but Dean swallows it down. “Sucks to be them, I guess.” He bites his tongue, his lips, the insides of his cheeks, but the questions spills out anyway. “Does it suck to be human too?”  
  
“Surely you’ve read the book of Revelation,” Cas says, voice soft.  
  
Dean hasn’t, and he figures he should, but maybe it’s one of those books with the unhappy endings that makes him want to throw it against the wall. So maybe he won’t read it. Instead, Dean cranes his neck around, pins Castiel’s blue button eyes with his own. “You wanna play dinosaurs? I could be the great and snarling and ferocious Deanosaurus—and you can be the sabre-toothed tiger or something.”  
  
“Dean,” Castiel says, “I don’t think that—“  
  
“Oh come on,” Dean whines. “It’s gonna be so much fun. It’s gonna be fun as heck.”  
  
And it kinda was, even though Cas kept saying that technically, in the Jurassic Age, there were no such thing as Deanosaurs and that the Tyrannosaurus Rex, in fact, had fluffy feathers instead of a carnivorous appetite and it was so distracting that Dean eventually had to ask Cas to shove it and to stop sucking the fun out of everything.  
  
Then Cas really, finally, got into the spirit of the game and chased him round and round the yard, jaws hanging open, tongue lolling from xyr mouth, great muscles coiling like springs, bringing xem closer and closer to Dean, until they collided into each other, until they rolled in the dirt, and Cas landed on top of him, both paws heavy against his chest, breath searing his face and smelling like hot blood, and Dean laughing, presses his palms against Cas’s chest, laughing and crying, “Uncle, uncle—“  
  
And maybe it takes a few extra moments for Cas to let up, but when xe does, they pant together in the grass, limbs tired and muscles sore until Dean sneaks into the house to make a tuna sandwich, and is inordinantly pleased when Cas voluntarily asks for a bite.

 

 

 

Dean’s up in his room, ankles wrapped tight around the wooden legs of his chairs, teeth gnawing at his pencil. Castiel’s there too, sprawled lazy on the bed, in the swath of hot sun pouring through the Midwestern windows glazed with dust and pollen so the room turns a hazy gold so hot that the fan whines helplessly from the corner, fluttering the pages of his history textbook and the pencil scribbled papers with filled in blanks and circled multiple choice, one in four chance of being right and hey, aren’t those good odds, better at least than the one you have of pulling the right answer from the dried up cistern of your skull, and hope it’s the right phrase, the right spelling, but it’s almost impossible to think with the heat sticky taffy gluing words and thoughts together.  
  
“Cas,” he says, “you’re an angel.”  
  
The tiger doesn’t say anything back but that’s okay—xe never says anything back when xe says Dean asks stupid questions.  
  
“Been around since the beginning of time,” Dean continues. “So you’d be able to tell me the whens and the whyfores of the Magna Carta, right?”  
  
“I could,” Cas says without making any effort to actually move out of that wedge of sunlight, belly flipped upwards, claws almost but not quite outstretched, the pink pads of xyr paws glimmering pink under dusty callouses. “I could also tell you about the spirit hovering over the waters, how there was no sound within the beginning, how the first noise was the first being crying out to another splashing their way towards the shore, answering and returning, and echoing across the spaces stretched wide. The first beasts,” Cas says, licking xyr maw with a swath of rough pink tongue.  
  
Dean raises his hands, fingers curled into talon. “Did they snarl and roar—lions and tigers and bears oh my?”  
  
“They tried to swallow the world whole,” Castiel says.  
  
“Oh. Including you guys?”  
  
Castiel rolls onto xyr side, tail curled tight around xyr flank. “Of course. They were the only ones.”  
  
“What happened to them?” Dean says. He’s turned around in his chair now, sitting like his Dad always sits, with the back of the chair against his front, elbows hanging off the edge, legs swinging over the side because his feet are too short to reach the ground.  
  
“God locked them away in purgatory,” Cas says. “Built a cage for them, with a lock the size of the world, thirsty and hungry for too much blood to ever open again and who would want them to?”  
  
“I bet you were glad, I bet everyone was glad,” Dean says.  
  
Castiel licks a paw. “God is fond of his cages. He has forged two cages. One for the beasts. One for the angels.”  
  
“Lucifer,” Dean says. “Are there more?”  
  
“Angels have other ways of falling now.”  
  
“Aren’t you ever afraid that God will put you down there anyway?” Dean says, legs swinging back and forth, ankles knocking into the wood with a dull thump like a heartbeat. “Because sometimes Dad does that. Go to your room! Don’t come out.”  
  
“Not all fathers are like yours, Dean,” Cas says.  
  
“Yeah. Bill, Jo’s Dad, is pretty cool. Even though he’s gone all the time which I dunno, I don’t like it when my dad’s gone all the time but Jo doesn’t seem to mind. She says, he has important work to do so I guess that makes it alright.” They’re silent for a moment, their heads bowed. “Tell me what happens next.”  
  
“I’ve already told you,” Castiel says.  
  
Dean screws up his face in the way that pleads best. “I want to hear it again, please. Word for word.”  
  
“After the beasts were gone, the waters teemed with life. I walked along the shores, and a sibling said to me, ‘Don’t step on that fish, Castiel, big plans for that fish.’”  
  
“No way,” Dean says. “My Daddy eats fish all the time. Nobody has plans for fish but to eat them.”  
  
“You were the fish,” Cas says like xe always said.  
  
Dean laughs, nervously, like he always did. Wonders what it feels like to be eaten. Had dreamed of jaws swallowing him whole, and did he crunch the whole way down, did his shin bone get caught in their mullet, and did the owner of that gaping mouth choke on him? The memory of the dream puts him in a cold sweat despite the heat, and he tries to listen to what Castiel is saying.  
  
“Not specifically, of course. Merely generically speaking. But the moment they dragged themselves from the shore, the minute they felt the ground beneath their feet—great things, Dean.”  
  
Dean spread his hands out, looks at the freckles like stars scattered across his skin. “I can’t imagine me having fins. Or gills. But it’d probably make bath times more fun, right?” He shifts deeper into his chair, shoulders rolling and shifting. “I could be Aquaman, only cooler.”  
  
“I don’t understand that reference,” Cas says and Dean laughs because maybe, okay, he’s a bit of a brat like Mom and Jo always say, and he likes to tease Cas with all the things an angel of the lord doesn’t know.  
  
“Hey, Cas?” Dean says, abandoning his desk and his paperwork.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Did you ever want to step on the fish?” he stretches out beside the tiger, loops an arm around a striped stomach. “Or did you ever get hungry and want to eat them? Or did you ever eat one and never told anybody?”  
  
Cas is silent for a moment. “I did not have a mouth or stomach at the time. Transdimensional wavelengths of celestial intent do not have physical needs.”  
  
“I don’t have a physical need for a cheeseburger—but I just really want one now,” Dean says.  
  
“I’m an angel,” Cas says.  
  
Dean pushes unhappily and sleepily at Cas’s hot tummy. “But what does that even mean anymore?”  
  
“I—“ Cas says—and pauses.  
  
Then Mary’s calling them down to dinner and Dean scampers down the stairs, crying out, race you Cas, race you to the very bottom, and no cheating using angel powers!

 

 

School was rough—rougher than usual because of Meg—not because of anything she did to Dean, but because of how she shook in class, and screamed for her father, screamed for her father so loud Dean’s eardrums cracked like broken window glass, and he thought she’d never stop, and Cas stood there, just stood there, and when Dean said, “Do something, Cas, do something!” Cas had done nothing, just said, “Do what? Eat her?”  
  
And Dean had nothing to say to that, not a word, because wow. Way below the belt, that kind of sarcasm. “What’s wrong with her?”  he said instead.  
  
“She’s remembering—“ and when Dean did not understand, Cas had elaborated, “She is remembering her real father.” And Dean maybe could understand why that would be distressing if one’s father was particularly awful or mean, but she wouldn’t stop, cowering in the corner, even though the teacher was calling parents and 911 and sending students to fetch the principle.  
  
“Do something,” Dean had said again, curling his fist through Cas’s scruff, eyes flicking between Meg and Ruby on her knees, begging Meg to be okay to please be okay. “You’re an angel. You can do anything.”  And when Cas simply watches on, apparently unfazed even though everyone else has their fists over their ears, Dean says, “You can’t just let her suffer—you just can’t just ignore someone’s pain like that—“ he flushes hot, right to the very core of him, as his prayers for Cas to eat her up, to gobble her whole sear their way through his memory, but it wouldn’t have hurt, not the way Cas would have done it—right, and he wriggles in his seat, wants to tear his skin off, wants to turn everything off, his ears, his mouth, his brain.  
  
“I would not deny her this memory,” Cas says, voice soft.  
  
Dean stares, Cas in a toy that’s not xyrs because the toy is Dean’s and the body is not xyrs and Dean looks at the way his fingers are clenched, the pain knitting its way into his locked joints, realizes these are things that Castiel does not have—but that Castiel has the memory of a fish on a far off shore, the voice of a father speaking that same fish into being, and goosebumps prick his neck and there’s a hollow feeling in his stomach, and he murmurs oh god, oh god, rocks back and forth, back and forth, and it’s not until Meg cries out for somebody to help, for somebody to make it stop, that Cas pads away from Dean’s side, breathes into her face, and she collapses into xyr shoulder (or onto the toy, it’s as if Dean sees both existing together), and the room splits apart under the pressure of the sudden silence as higher level school leaders (Dean’s pretty sure he sees the principle and is that an ambulance outside, red and blue a whirly gig twirl against the walls, banshee shrieks piercing the thin tissue of his ear drums) take her away.  
  
So Dean’s happy when he sees Mom’s sleek black impala resting in the driveway when they let them go home for the day which is weird because she usually works at the Road House by this time, but here she is, here they both are,  ready to hear what happened to Meg at school, ready to explain it to him like dictionaries define words, and that must be why Cas can’t explain it because it’s not like English is xyr native tongue, right, that would be that thing called E-noch-ian, and Dean thinks about that as he rests his hand on the top of the of the hood, all warm and barely humming with the echo of a once thrumming engine, shaking the nerves right out of his own hands. So shiny that Dean can see his reflection in the paint so he scowls and makes a face, the kind that his Mom warned him would freeze that way as she ran her fingers through his hair.  
  
But when he pushes his way inside the door, Mom’s not there, not watching television in the living room or making dinner in the kitchen or doing that thing she sometimes did where she stood in the hallway with her feet shoulder width apart, t-shirt sleeves rolled up over her shoulders, muscles flexing as she goes through a routine that Dean thinks would hurt if the thing in front of her was a person instead of actual air and she’s like an action hero in that moment, out of place, like Dean thinks that maybe she should be out in the middle of an adventure, a super secret agent spy person, and when he asks her if that’s who she is, she just laughs, and just says, “I’m your mom, honey.”  
  
Dean thinks that she may be outside, doing that thing he sometimes sees her doing that thing with the road salt when she thinks he’s asleep or after Dad and she’s been fighting. But when he heads out again and makes his way to the backyard, she’s not there, back bent double as she pours the salt around the perimeter of the house.  
  
So he stoops on the front porch, and pulls out Castiel, clutches xem tight to xyr chest. “Where is she?” he says, Meg’s cries a vague, fading ringing in his ears replaced by the pressing need to find Mom, to find her now.  
  
“She’s here,” Cas says. “Just because she’s not here for you at this precise moment in time doesn’t mean that she’s not here.”  
  
“What the heck, Cas? What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Cas doesn’t elaborate so Dean just picks up his stuff, and calls out, “Mom, are you here?’  
  
But there’s no answer. So he climbs the stairs, backpack bumping along behind him, and he dumps his stuff in his room, and continues down the hall until he comes to the master bedroom. The door’s cracked open, and for some reason, Dean can’t bear to make himself shout so he just whispers, knuckles scraping against the wood, “Mom?”  
  
No answer, so he licks his lips, and says, “Oh gosh. Oh god.”  
  
“I’m here, Dean,” Cas says.  
  
“I know. Mom always said that angels were watching over me.”  
  
But Dean pushes his way through the door and sees that the bathroom door is closed, but that there’s a sliver of light harsh between the floor and the edge, and there’s the breathy scratchy sound of something like sobbing (like Meg) but that can’t be right because Mom didn’t cry, Mom never cried not even when Dad was mean and came home late shouting and drunk.  
  
“Mom?” he says again.  
  
There is a sudden silence, the sound of tissue tearing and Mary saying, “Dean—Dean hang on.”  
  
And it only takes a few moments for her to come out, wiping her fingertips beneath the curve of her eyes. “Hey, sweetie. I must have lost track of time.” She opens her arms, and Dean goes to her, wraps his around her neck. “But next time, baby—“ but then she just dips her head, her chin digging into his shoulder but not too hard.  
  
“Is everything okay, Mom?”  
  
“Of course. Everything’s going to be fine.” She leans back onto her haunches, smoothing his cheeks with the palm of her hand. “What do you want for dinner? Mac ‘n’ cheese with sliced up hot dogs? Pizza?”  
  
“Apple pie?”  
  
“How about that for dessert, little man,” Mary says. “Wait for me downstairs, alright?” She guides Dean by the shoulder. “Momma just needs a few minutes to clean up.”  
  
And the door closes behind her and Dean looks into Cas’s face. “I don’t understand. She was crying but now she says everything is okay.” His face wrinkles up into a frown as he goes down the stairs again.  “I don’t think Mom has ever lied to me before.”  
  
“It is a trait that defines humanity,” Cas says. “Lies. Falsehood. Deceit.”  
  
“What was wrong with her, Cas?” He holds the tiger up, hands cradling xyr head, the scruff that flared from xyr neck ruffling xyr skin. “Don’t not say anything or just ‘nothing’ like you think I’m some dumb kid. You can’t lie, can you, Cas? You’re an angel.”  
  
Castiel goes still at that, barely breathing and Dean can’t feel the echoes of xyr breat, of xyr barely there purr that’s sometimes more growl. “She’s pregnant, Dean.”  
  
His mouth drops open. “No,” Dean says. “No way.”  
  
“I heard the baby,” Castiel says. “I saw the baby. She is pregnant, and you will have a sibling.”  
  
Dean collapses onto the couch, body curled around Castiel. “A brother,” Dean says.  
  
“A sibling,” Cas repeats.  
  
But then they hear Mom come down the stairs in her bare feet, and she starts making dinner as she says, “Did you need something, Dean?”  
  
And Dean wonders if he should tell her about Meg, and he sees the same salty tracks down her cheeks that had streaked Meg’s and it makes his heart clench up and it’s just slam your palms against your eyes, scream lalala and no one will hear (well, Cas will hear but xe won’t tell anyone who matters) and it’s not true, it never happened, so Dean asks, “Is Dad coming home today, Mom? Will he be here to eat dinner with us?”  
  
Her face is tight, and her smile a little strained when she says, “I hope so, baby. I hope so.”  
  
And they’re not disappointed to hear his steps on the porch, to hear the door creak as he pushes his way in. But his breath has that sickly sweet smell when Dean clings to his leg, when he bends down to hug him with one arm. Dad gives Mom the same one armed hug with a peck on the cheek before opening the fridge, and uncapping a cold green bottle of beer. He bends his neck back, body and back an arched line, strung tight as a bow string, his neck gulping it down and down and down, tendons corded thick down the soft yield of his throat, and Mary turns away, shaking her head, and Dean wishes he had the courage to pluck the blue of his jeans and say, Hey Dad, you’re making Momma sad? Why do you always do that?  
  
But maybe he wasn’t such a good son at all because the only thing he can do is just clutch Cas to himself, tighter and tighter and hope that Dad’ll notice—maybe he’ll notice when they eat, and they’ll hold hands like they used to.  
  
“Dinner,” Mary calls, and Dean slides into his chair, Cas in his lap. “You want some? It’s macaroni and cheese with hot dogs sliced up. Meat, tigers like meat don’t they?”  
  
“Stop talking to the damn toy,” Dad says. “You’re gonna try to feed him and then your mom’s gonna have to put him in the washer and she shouldn’t have to clean up after your messes.”  
  
Dean draws himself up stiff. “Cas is an angel,” he says. “And xe doesn’t need meat. But that doesn’t mean that xe doesn’t want it.”  
  
Dad rolls his eyes, shadows his brow with the wide edge of his palm. “Oh for fuck’s sakes.”  
  
“John,” Mom says, a hard edge to her voice, as she dumps a spoonful of cheesy noodles into his bowl.  
  
Dad rolls his eyes, tucks in a mouthful of macaroni and chews it sloppily, and Dean wonders if that’s maybe how tigers eat, or if they wouldn’t even pause to wipe their mouths with their wrists like Dad’s doing right now.  
  
Mary finishes her plate, puts the spoon in her bowl softly so that it doesn’t make a noise, puts both palms on the table. “I have news, Dean. John.”  
  
John glances up from the lip of his beer. “What’s that?”  
  
Mary frowns, bites her lip with a flash of white teeth. “I’m pregnant.”  
  
“You’re what?” Dad says, eyes sliding to Dean and Dean hunkers down in his chair, pleased and scared that Cas had been right (but when were angels wrong about anything).  
  
“Pregnant,” Mary says again.  
  
“How could you do that—“  
  
“—we do that,” her voice sharp.  
  
“You know that—“ and that Dad remembers that Dean is there because his eyes snap to him before returning to the mouth of his beer bottle. “You know what. I said I’d meet the fellas out for a drink. We’ll talk about this later.”  
  
And then he’s gone, slamming the door behind him, leaving Mary and Dean alone at the table.  
  
“Come on. Help me with the dishes,” Mary says, stacking plates and bowls and cups.  
  
“But Mom,” Dean says. “I’ve been doing schoolwork all day and Star Trek’s on.”  
  
“I already checked the guide, Dean. It’s a re-run. You saw it last night. Help me with the dishes.”  
  
Dean hangs his head back until the hard edge digs into his neck. “Fine.”  
  
She waits until Dean slides out of his chair and begins to help. “You didn’t seem surprised, Dean.”  
  
Dean looks back at Cas, propped up against the back. “Cas told me already when I asked him why—“ and his eyes flick to Cas and then amends, softly – “why you were in the bathroom.”  
  
“Cas told you I was pregnant?” But Mary’s not looking at Dean when she asks the question, but at Cas, and Dean’s surprised to see the hard glint in her eye, the way it narrows like when she’s pitching Dean a ball and it sails by him fast, but not too fast he can’t hit it with a thwack. She licks her lips. “Well maybe Cas shouldn’t go around sharing other people’s secrets.”  
  
Dean looks at his toes, wriggles them together inside his socks. “Don’t blame xem. I asked xe to tell me, and Cas did.”  
  
“Well you’re just a child, and Cas is—“  
  
“An angel,” Dean says.  
  
“So—xe—says.” Mary turns the faucet on, lets the water run into the sink while she squeezes and squeezes the soap bottle, fingers curled tight around, plastic crinkling up into sharp edges and Dean wonders if it’s gonna split, if the whole bottle is gonna split and spill soap all over her hands even as the white suds rise and rise and rise, all foam and bubbles smelling of oranges.  
  
“Mom,” Dean says, and she looks down, stops, smiles at Dean.  
  
“Oops.”  
  
“What are you gonna name the baby,” Dean says, dragging a chair over next to Mom so that he could help her with the rinsing.  
  
“Probably after your grandfather,” Mary says. “You know my mother was Deanna.”  
  
“Does that mean she was your favorite parent?” Dean says.  
  
Mary smiles into her soap water, fingers curled around a cup. “No,” she says, even though she’s smiling strangely. “You had her eyes. That’s why I named you after her.”  
  
“I wish I could see her,” Dean says.  “I wish she was still alive.”  
  
“Me too, baby,” Mary says, sliding her soap sudded hand into the water, holding her fingers inside her palms..  
  
Dean bumped into her with his hip.  
  
“You’re gonna help take care of your baby sibling, right, Dean?” Mary says. “You’re gonna help take care of Baby Sammy?”  
  
“Yeah, Mom. Always, of course.” He snuggles up against her side. “And don’t forget. There’s always Cas too.”  
  
She doesn’t say anything to that. Just slides her glance over Castiel’s way, and when Dean follows her gaze, he only sees a little toy, a little stuffed tiger toy only yay big but the blue of xyr eyes, the blue of xyr eyes burns hot and, like a fog seeping across glass, Dean hears the words:  
  
Big plans, Dean. For you and Sam—as it is on earth, so it is in heaven.  
  
And Dean maybe shivers a little with a child that raises the goose bumps on his neck. “Mom,” he says, “Do you believe in fate?”  
  
She opens her mouth, and he can hear the sound of it, the sound of her swallowing. “No,” she says. “Not one bit.” She looks over her shoulder at Castiel again. “You be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”  
  
Dean stares into the water, traces of suds scudding across the top. “So—does that mean I don’t have to do the dishes if I don’t want to?”

 

It’s hard to sleep now that Dad came home, now that, even underneath a blanket-pillow fort, Dean can still hear the undercurrent of their voice, like the kind of days where the wind won’t stop blowing and the tornado sirens ring and ring and ring, blaring warning will robinson warning warning and he and Mom and Dad crouch low in their basement, Dad kicking at the door.  
  
It’s kinda like that, only worse, because the sirens aren’t there, pulling them together. It’s just the wind of their voices and Dean wonders if it’ll ever stop.  
  
“Can’t sleep?” Cas whispers in his ear from the darkness.  
  
Dean curls up tighter into a ball. “No.” Cas settles in beside him, warm against his back. “What did you mean, Cas? What did you mean by what you said earlier—about me and my brother.”  
  
“You’re special, Dean,” Cas says. “You are the righteous man. You are meant for great things. You are meant to save the world.”  
  
“But I’m just a kid, Cas.”  
  
“Children grow up.”  
  
Xyr tiger breath is warm against his cheek, ruffling his hair. “The world is awfully big,” Dean says. “Are you sure?”  
  
“God has spoken and the word is god,” Cas says. “You can’t change it. There’s nothing you can do to change it.”  
  
“That’s not what Mom said.”  
  
“Your mother is human. The ways of God are—It is not a coincidence that your mother will be having another Winchester--“  
  
Cas doesn’t finish, but Dean feels his stomach tighten up, coiling with something that makes him want to dig his heels into the earth.  “Well I think that’s—that’s—“ he searches for the worst word he can think of—“Well I think that’s crap.”  
  
Cas tilts xyr head at him, a lip curled up to reveal the glinting point of a fang.  
  
“You keep telling me I’m special, but I know for a gosh darn fact that Anna told the same thing to Jo. So that means—“ and it hits Dean in the gut, like nausea and vomit burning the ventricles of his heart—“so that means things can change. That means Jo can do it.” He swallows hard, remembering how his Mom hadn’t said a single word when he had hopped down off the chair, merely flicking his retreating back with water, laughing and he had laughed too. “I don’t know what your big plan is, you secretive person who keeps secrets, but I’m only gonna do it if I want to. And if I don’t want to, maybe Jo will want to.”  
  
“Perhaps you will choose not to play your part, Dean Winchester,” Cas says. “But nothing will stop the end, nothing will stop the beginning. It’s already happened, it will continue to happen, because the Righteous Children will grow up with the Special Children, and there are plans for them all.”  
  
Dean’s toes are cold, cold like that one time he went out in his bare feet in the snow on a dare, cold and marbled blue, and Dean can’t tell if his parents have stopped shouting or if the only thing he can hear is the way his heart pounds in his ears, the way his lungs ache for breath, the way the blood rushes to his head. “I think you talk a big game, Cas.” He rolls over so that they’re facing each other, and Dean can’t look away from those blue blue eyes shining in the darkness. “But you’re hanging this over me like some shadow, like—“ he struggles to find the words, the right situation to explain it—“but it’s like you’re that kid on the playground, you know more than me and maybe that’s okay—I sure as heck wish you’d share it with me because, well just cause—but you jerk me around because you know this thing that I don’t know. And then you’re telling me that I’m gonna do these things for you—“  
  
“—not for me,” Cas says, “for god.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter, Cas.” Dean looks down at the paws, at the way they’re held limply from xyr chest so he puts his hands inside the hard and sharp cradle they formed. “People shouldn’t do what they don’t wanna do. Life’s too short.”  
  
“I have lived—“  
  
“I don’t care how old you are,” Dean says. “Life’s too short.” Dean frowns again. “You talk about the big plans for us—what did you say, Righteous Kids? Does that mean Jo is one too? – and you talk about plans for fish and you talk about fate and it’s like—what about you? What about plans for you? What about the things you want to do? There’s a right and there’s a wrong here—and do you really think that this is right?”  
  
Cas looks so tiny now, like a stuffed animal, nothing but blue glass and orange fabric and cotton stuffing but also not, also the way xe overtakes the bed, the shadows, and oh god, are those wings but when Dean blinks the image is gone, melted away like light blots from looking at the sun too long.  
  
“Do you really want to be just a toy? All the time? To somebody else?” Dean says.  
  
Dean’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the way the shadows thicken, the way there’s an outline of feathers, the way Cas seems suddenly, overwhelmingly large, the way xe’s no longer lying down on the bed, but looming over Dean, hot breath and is that the smell of meat, the kind of meat that hadn’t been cooked yet, the way it smelled when Mom unwrapped pink wrinkly piles of hamburger and sprinkled herbs and raw eggs and then mashed it all together with her hands—xyr breath smelled kind of like that but instead of parsley and oregano, it was blood and Dean wanted to cry out uncle, uncle but for some reason the words get stuck in his throat, his tongue swelled up with something sour from his stomach.  
  
“You should show me some respect.” The words come from Cas, like thunder and earthquake rumbling in xyr tiger-belly, spilling out from xyr tiger-maw, and Dean says nothing, does nothing because what can he say to this, to this creature, to this angel of the lord who is also his toy but not really his toy just in the shape of a toy.  
  
“Go to sleep,” Cas says finally, backing off to the foot of the bed.  
  
And somehow, Dean does, but his dreams are restless, full of shadows hiding eyes peering from the darkness.  It’s only when he wakes up that he remembers he forgot to ask about the Special Kids.  
  
But when he sees Cas’s broad back facing him, striped black and orange, he can’t quite manage to summon the energy to ask.  
  
It didn’t matter, right? It didn’t matter who people said you were, or who were supposed to be.  
  
The heck with that.

 

 

Autumn vacation’s next week, and Dean doesn’t know what he’s gonna do because it’s Thanksgiving and Mom hates her Winchester family and nobody ever talks about how John’s a Campbell and no one’s ever even seen his parents, not even Mom.  
  
They always do something special. They always go camping even though it’s nippy in the morning and at night. Dean hates going, hates that there aren’t enough blankets and no sleeping bag is thick enough to save him from the rocks digging into his ribs and back. Hate that they have to miss Star Trek and sure, there are always reruns when they get back but they never have time because school starts up or Dad says that he watches too much tv and he should go and do some chores to build up some moral fiber and they sit spinning across the silver screen unwatched and gosh Dean just wants to collapse on the couch during vacations from school, to escape teachers telling him that no you have to be able to do long division in your head and that commas are really important in the large scheme of things and fall break is the escape, a turtle shell of high walls and tv with people that make no demands of him whatsoever.  
  
But sometimes it’s the only time that Dad’ll actually smile, and maybe that’ll make it worth it.  
  
“Can we stop at the Roadhouse,” Dean says, as they haul their luggage into the car. “I just—“ and he looks back at Cas, sitting on the porch like it’s too small for him, and maybe earth really is too small for an angel.  
  
“Why?” Dad says, grunting as he chooses between which barbeque sauce to bring, and Dean remembers with dismay that yeah, this is the time they hunt their own meat and cook it too, and Dad’s gonna want him to tag along and he’ll have to get his hands bloody and dirty and he won’t ever hold the knife tight enough and gosh why the heck are they going on this vacation?  
  
“Because I need to see Jo,” Dean says. He looks back at Cas. “I need to ask her something.”  
  
Mary catches the look between him and Cas, and Dean wishes she hadn’t because she zeroes in, she goes to him, puts her body between him and Cas and says, “Why?”  
  
“I just need to ask her something,” Dean says. He swallows, and he tries to look back at Cas again but Mom moves with his eyes. “That’s all.”  
  
“About what?” Mom asks.  
  
“Just—“ and Dean shuffles his feet because he knows Mom doesn’t know about Cas, that she thinks xe’s an imaginary friend, and that’s okay, it really is because Cas had already explained that they see xem as the toy because xe chose not to reveal xemself to her—and Dean can’t deny that flush in his tummy, the warmth that just spreads around him like a summer-spun cocoon at the thought that Cas chose to reveal himself to just him, only him—so he just says, “I just needed to ask something about Mr. Buns. In preparation for when we get back. We’re gonna have a tea party, Jo said.”  
  
“What,” Dad grunts, “she got you whipped already boy?”  
  
And Dean blinks because what the heck and Mom says John in that warning tone and Dad just stomps back off to the house, muttering then yelling at Dean to get his damned toys off the porch so that people wouldn’t be in danger of tripping over them, so Dean scurries away, holds onto Castiel, and it feels strange, cradling xem in his arms in this way because it had just been the other night when he had seen his wings, when Cas had spoken with the voice of the beasts and now Cas was letting Dean hold xem and the thoughts make Dean dizzy.  
  
Then it’s time to go and they pile into the car and Dean guesses they chose not to stop by the Roadhouse so that Dean could ask Jo his question, but as they drive by, he sees her out on the yard, butter knife in hand, waving it around while Anna inside Mr. Buns watches over—and she pauses, turns to look at Dean, and Dean presses his hand against the glass, and Cas is there over his shoulder, breath fogging the window, while Anna’s button eyes gleam in the sun and they say hello, goodbye with their eyes before Dad turns a corner, and they’re both of them gone.  
  
Dad flips the radio station to classic rock, turns the volume up until Mom shoots him a glance, and they start the long drive to what Dad calls the wilderness but what Dean knows is just some campground with clearly marked lots for each family with their tents and barbeque pits.  
  
Boo-howdy what fun.

It’s not dark per say when Dad wakes him up, more like a slate grey with the bladed threat of a rising sun just below the horizon. It hurts Dean’s eyes anyway, waking up, and not even Cas beside him, huge and warm and awake always awake, takes the seeping chill of the dawn away.  
  
“mmmmmmph,” Dean says, trying to push the hand on his shoulder away. “Tired, go ‘way.”  
  
“Best time to catch fish is in the morning, Deano,” Dad says. “We’ll catch enough, skin them open, have fried fish for breakfast.”  
  
Dean’s stomach feels suddenly queasy so he curls in a little tighter. “I don’t even wake up this early for school,” he says.  
  
“Just because you’re not in school-school don’t mean you’re not in school, boy,” Dad says, peeling the sleeping bag off him.  
  
The cold air numbs his toes, slicing under the arches of his feet.  
  
“Upsy-daisy,” Dad says, bending down to offer him a hand, then dragging him to his feet. “Get dressed and meet me at the dock in five minutes.”  
  
Dean turns to Cas and says, “You know, you could probably fish better than any of us can. What is it the bible says, fisher of men? Hah.”  
  
“In reference to humans,” Cas says. “I’m an angel of the lord, warrior of god. We don’t fish.” Xe licks a paw, almost daintily Dean thinks.  
  
“Don’t you ever get hairballs,” Dean says as he shimmies into a pair of cargo pants and pulls a red shirt inside-out and backwards facing. He fingers the white tag then twists it around so that it’s to the back but makes no further effort to fix it.  
  
“We’re angels—“  
  
“Blah, blah, blah,” Dean says. “You coming? To watch over me like Momma says?” He waggles his brows at Cas because heck if he has to get out in the cold then so should Cas.  
  
“I don’t have to be in physical proximity to you,” Cas says.  
  
“I think you just want to stay in the warm tent, you big fraidy cat,” Dean says.  “That’s your answer to everything! I don’t have to be there—“ and he puts air quotes around the phrase because Cas does say it an awful lot and it’s frustrating because “unlike some people, I don’t happen to be a wavelength of celestial intent. All human here, with human eyes, that aren’t omni-whatsit.”  
  
“Omnipotent.”  
  
“With a brain that’s not omni-science.”  
  
“Omniscient,” Cas says, lolling on xyr back, pink tongue peeking between the eyeteeth of xyr fangs.  
  
“And I got a human body that obeys the laws of physics. Only one thing in one space at one time,” Dean adds, hopping on one foot and pulling up his sock. It’s got a hole in the heel.  
  
“Omnipresent,” and Cas says it with a hint of a growl that Dean thinks that okay, maybe, he should just shut up now but he doesn’t because come on. People don’t get to stay stuffed toys forever.  Xe looks up at Dean, button eyes the clearest blue, bluer than the blue chloreen in the public pool. “I have secret to tell you, Dean.”  
  
Dean’s breath catches in his throat. “What?”  
  
“Angels aren’t any of those things. Only God is.”  
  
“Well, that’s funny because if God were everywhere you’d think he’d be right here, right—like if you reached out and touched—“ and Dean stretches out his hand to the sunlight seeping through the tent, fingertips interrupting the flow of dust like flecks of gold floating in air “—you’d think he’d be there, he’d be right there. But there’s nothing there.” He ruffles his fingers together, skin whispering against skin. “Just air.”  
  
“Air that could be the breath of God,” Cas says.  
  
“So much breath,” Dean says. “So little words.” He crawls close to Cas, sits down crosslegged in front of xem, elbows planted on his knees. “Truth. What would you want to hear God say?”  
  
Cas looks away, xyr paws cradling xyr huge jaw. “There are few angels who have seen the face of God, and I am not one of them.”  
  
“Who cares,” Dean says. “Could happen in the future, you don’t know.”  
  
Cas is silent, still, not even breathing, not blowing the flecks of dust that lands on xyr pink nose, making the skin twitch like xe was actually a tiger, a real live tiger in the flesh.  
  
“Okay. I’ll go first. If I saw my dad for the first time in a long time—I’d want him to take me by the shoulders, and I’d want him to kneel down so that I didn’t have to look up at him and he didn’t have to look down at me. And he’d say, you did good.” Dean can already see Cas opening up xyr mouth to ask him some bone-headed question about what the heck he did that was good, so he rushes on: “And it wouldn’t matter what I did.  Because you know, I do tons of stuff everyday like homework and dishes and chores and stuff, but he’d just come home, and he’d see me, and he’d say, you did good.”  
  
The air’s a little bit quiet and they can both hear Dad clunking around on the dock, the spin of the line as Dad does a few practice flicks since he only ever enjoyed fishing on a boat.  
  
“Your turn,” Dean says.  
  
“There is a parable in your Bible,” Cas says, voice throaty and rumbly in xyr mouth. “Your Bible gets so many things wrong, but.” And Cas stops, but Dean forces himself not to say anything, to remain still, so’s not to break xyr concentration. “It was about several men. One, of course, represents God the Father. The others are of no import—they do no represent the divine, but rather you—the humankind. But I suppose for the purposes of this story, they could also represent me, though as far as I understand, angels are not—“  
  
“—Cas,” Dean says.  
  
“They are given a task by the—“ Cas says something that Dean can’t parse, then says, “—in English most likely seen as the God-Father figure.  All do their tasks poorly, except for one. And at the end of the tale, kneeling at their God-Figure’s feet, he says, Well done, my good and faithful servant.”  
  
Dean jerks his head up, frowning a little. “Servant? Are you serious?”  
  
“I serve God, Dean,” Cas says, not looking at him with xyr blue-glass eyes. “That is the definition of being a servant.”  
  
“But you’re not a servant!” Dean says, scrambling to his feet. “Nobody should be a servant.”  
  
“Angels were created to serve.” Cas licks xyr paw, the scrape of pink tongue against orange and black fur the only noise inside the tent.  
  
“I thought you said angels were warriors.”  
  
“All soldiers serve their commanding their officers, and in turn, their commanding officers serve the one who gives them their orders. We are all servants, Dean,” Cas says, finally looking at him, a sheen of damp fur glimmering in the sun. “We all serve someone—even you.”  
  
Dean scoffs, throws his arms up in the air, giving Cas the full brunt of the scowl that would surely freeze his face that way as Mom was so eager to point out at any given moment or opportunity. “This goes back to the work you have planned for me?  How I’m the righteous man? Well guess what—I won’t serve anybody. If God thinks that I’m gonna do whatever when I still refuse to fold my clothes and put them away, he’s got another think comin.”  
  
“Dean—“  
  
And, for the first time, Dean’s glad when he hears Dad yelling at him to get his butt out here and fish some goddamn breakfast for their Mom, hadn’t he taught him shit about providing and taking care of family? and normally he’d roll his eyes at that, but all he does is shake his head at Cas who stays in the tent and the air nips his fingers and his earlobes and a wind riffs its way under his shirt until he’s got goose bumps everywhere, and it probably wouldn’t be so bad and shivering chilly if Cas had come out with him because nothing was too terrible when Cas was with him, but Dean doesn’t care.  
  
He is his own little man like Grampa Bobby said.  
  
It’s not until they’re in the boat, and his hands are blue around a fishing rod, that Dean realizes that Cas had basically just said what Dean had said about his Dad, only just used a lot of different words to say it, and he grips his rod a little tighter, muttering, “That copy cat.”  
  
Dad asks him what the hell he’s talking about but Dean can’t say anything because no way no how would he ever tell Dad what he had told Cas because Dad would be so weird about it, would just say something like, you always do good, awkward clap of the hand on the shoulder, and the next day, Dad would be gone and when he’d come home, he’d see something like Dean’s bike and ask why there was dirt on the frame or why his room was always so damn messy and Dean couldn’t take it.  
  
So he just says “Nothing” and Dad sighs and rolls his eyes, wondering why he ever bothered to come out on a family vacation at all and maybe, next time, they could just stay home and he’d go out by himself.  
  
Dad’s voice lingers on the waters and Dean tries not to wonder if Dad ever dreams about not ever coming home again, kinda like how Dean dreams about never leaving home to go on these horrible camping trips in the first place.

 

They catch their fish, and Dad strings something through their gills so that they’re strung up all in a row, and then he ties them to a wooden rack that Mom brought to dry their swim things so they won’t get dusty, and Dean hopes they’re already dead because it looks painful as heck, hearing their bodies thump against the wood in the wind.  
  
“Gonna take a leak,” Dad says as he heads off into the brush. “Then we’re gonna gut that fish, boy. Gonna teach you how.”  
  
And Dean tries not to let his lip curl behind Dad’s back because that’s disrespectful but he can’t help doing just a small one, especially since Cas is still hiding, maybe, in the tent, and Dean wants to tell him to come out but he can’t because gosh, why did Cas always have to say the upsetting things xe said.  
  
So he goes to his Mom, who’s reading a leather bound journal she slips behind her back when Dean comes up to her, sits beside her, and puts his head on her lap while she thumbs through his hair, scratching and scratching and Dean does that thing that Cas does sometimes, the purr and the growl and Mom laughed the first few times he did it but she’s not doing it now –  
  
Maybe it’s because it’s camping and nothing is funny or happy really. So he asks her, “Did you read the Bible ever, Mom?”  
  
“When I was younger, a little bit,” Mary says. “We had a big bible—but then. I don’t know. We kinda drifted away from it.”  
  
“Except for the part about the angels, right?”  
  
And Mom just swallows. Just says, “Yes.”  
  
“Cas told me something. Xe said it was a story from the Bible, but I don’t know if I believe xem,” Dean says. “About these guys and how another guy said well done my good and faithful servant. Is that—is that really a story from the bible?”  
  
“It is. It’s a parable. The parable of the talents. Possibly my least favorite story,” Mary says. “Why—why would Cas tell you about such a thing?”  
  
“We were just talking,” Dean says because this is Mom, but she’s still married to Dad, and maybe they fight sometimes but if he told her what he told Cas, then—there’d just be one extra argument that Dean didn’t want to hear through his too thin sleeping bag pillow.  
  
“About theology?” Mary asks. “Fate and free will?”  
  
Dean shakes his head. “About family.”  
  
Mary presses her lips to Dean’s forehead, kisses him there. “My little angel,” she murmurs.  
  
“Cas is the angel,” Dean says, almost sleepily. “Not me.”  
  
“You are to me, baby.”  
  
Then John’s voice comes from the back, “Dean, Dean,” he calls, “grab the fish.”  
  
Dean scrambles up from Mary’s lap—and they exchange a glance, she squeezes his hand a little—“it’ll be okay, baby.” Then she cups his jaw, brings him in close, whispers in his ears, “Don’t look if you have to. Don’t be afraid to close your eyes just like you do in the movies, okay?”  
  
Dean nods, runs to get the fish before Dad can yell at him again, doesn’t look at them flopping in the air like they’re swimming, just keeping on swimming, like everything was okay. Dad’s kneeling beside the water, sharpening his gutting knife against a grind stone.  
  
It makes the skin over his backbone crawl, and Dean shivers, even though it’s the hottest part of the day right now, and it’s so humid Dean can barely breathe.  
  
He almost calls for Cas, but then remembers that xe is still in the tent, that xe told him a bed time parable bible story that was the exact same thing Dean had said, and it was so weird, it was just too much, like how does that happen, those same feelings from so far away in some other creature so old and so big like that time he had gone to six flags, and they had gone up the drop, the rollercoaster climbing and climbing near perpendicular before just letting everyone go, stomach pancaking before flipping into free fall, voice screaming at the ground rushing up at you big and he has to stop and steady himself on his feet, hands gripping his heart through his red t-shirt, until Dad turns around says, “Come on, Dean. Get a grip.”  
  
Dean shakes himself, hands the fish over and they’re kneeling beside the water, rippling and glinting and moving with the wind, Dad with a knife against the fish’s throat, and they’re on a shore, there’s sand between his toes, the soft purr of the water in his ears and Dean remembers, remembers the way Cas told him, Don’t step on that fish, Castiel, big plans for that fish and his heart rises up in his throat, pumping blood and battery acid like a volcano and his hands shake and he tries to say, Dad, Dad no—big plans for that fish, Dad, what if there are big plans for that fish—but the sentence won’t come out, just the word “Dad” getting stuck in his throat, between his teeth, “Dad—Dad—Dad—“ over and over until Dad’s looking at him like who the fuck are you, kid—“don’t, please don’t.”  
  
“The fish is dead, Dean,” Dad says, “it’ll be a waste to just throw it away without eating it.”  
  
Dean’s sitting on the shore, knees to his chest, rocking, “What if it dragged itself on the shore, Dad? That’s what Cas said—the fish dragged themselves on the shore with their legs and what if this fish had big plans you can’t just—“  
  
“Fucking hell,” Dad says and he calls, “Mary! Mary!”  
  
“Hello, Dean—“ and it’s Cas’s voice behind him, and Dean forgets that he’s upset with Cas, upset that Cas took what he woulda told to his dad, upset that it was the same thing, that nothing ever changes ever but that doesn’t matter right now, doesn’t matter one bit, as he turns and buries his head in Cas’s shoulder, streaking the fur there with salt and tears. “There are no plans for this fish,” Cas says. “You can eat it without fear.”  
  
Then Mom pulls him up into her arms, and he straddles his legs around her waist, and she’s saying things in his ears, but Dean just has eyes for Cas walking beside her, shadow taller than her, muscles rolling underneath xyr fur—“Do you wanna lie down, Dean, until lunch?”  
  
And Dean nods yes, crawls into the tent, burrows in his sleeping bag, Cas following after, and Dean pulls xem in tight so that they’re snuggling up with Cas’s breath hot on Dean’s face.  
  
“Can I tell you something,” Dean asks, and he wipes his face, surprised to see his hands come away wet. “And you promise you won’t tell a soul?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Sometimes—when you talk about me being the righteous man—I just feel this pressure up in here—“ and Dean puts his hand over his chest, over his heart that’s still scudding against his bone—“and it’s just—it’s just too big, Cas. And I feel like—“ he bites his lips, closes his eyes – “I feel like it’s gonna eat me up alive, Cas.”  
  
Cas lowers xyr head, and Dean thinks for a wild moment that xe is going to lick him, but Cas doesn’t, just purrs a little, and it makes his bones and skin thrum and buzz, like he’s purring too. “Sleep now. No one is going to eat you, Dean.”  
  
“Because you’re going to watch over me?” Dean murmurs.  
  
“Yes. Because I’m going to watch over you.”  
  
And Dean’s eyes fall closed, and he passes into sleep until Mom shakes him awake, telling him it’s time to eat, and Cas looks at him with those blue-blue eyes, smiling a little, and Dean remembers Cas’s promise, clutches Mom’s hand tight, and smiles back.

 

Later that night, when there’s just the snapping fire, the thick smell of charred marshmallows on the air, John gone off in their tent, already smelling sickly sweet of alcohol, Mom and Dean and Cas cuddle up with each other, ignoring the way the sharp stones dig into their butts and the way the smoke cloys in their eyes.  
  
Mom’s arm drapes over his shoulder, Cas cradled in his lap. “What happened today, baby,” she whispers, tracing patterns across his scalp.  
  
“What do you mean, Mom?”  
  
“The fish—what upset you so.”  
  
Dean flushes, clutches Cas to his stomach. “Cas told me a story, and I—I was afraid for a second, that’s all.”  
  
“Afraid?”  
  
“Not for me—just for the fish. Cuz—we used to be fish once, you know. What would have happened if someone had stepped on us?” He glances down at Cas’s broad head. “If someone had eaten us when we were still just fish dragging ourselves to a shore?”  
  
Mom’s hand stills against his head. “That sounds like a horrible thing to tell somebody. Does Cas tell you other stories?”  
  
“Sometimes,” Dean says. “I don’t remember them all—“ as he stretches, stretches like he’d seen Cas do in the sun only it was the firelight for him. “Cas is so old, Mom. Of course, he has stories to tell.”  
  
“I’m sure.” She drags her fingers through his hair.  
  
“You don’t trust Cas?” Dean says, craning his head so that her hand falls beside her thigh, so that he can meet her eyes. “Xe hasn’t done anything.”  
  
“Dean—“ and Mary shudders, stops talking.  
  
“You think I’m lying about Cas,” Dean says, voice hard. “You think that—xe’s an imaginary friend. Like Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. Or like that bunny in that creepy movie that I wasn’t supposed to be watching but watched anyway from the hallway.”  
  
“What?” Mary said, kinda-sorta picking him up enough to make his stomach flop before she set him down. “You bad boy. I thought I raised you better than that.”  
  
“Mom,” Dean says, refusing to let her take him off track. “Cas isn’t my imaginary friend. Xe’s real.”  
  
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,” Mary says.  
  
Dean twines his fingers through Mary’s hands. “What do you mean? You were the one who told me that angels are watching over me—or you know what Cas said, one of the first things xe said to me?”  
  
It takes Mary a second to respond, but she does.  “What?”  
  
“That xe wasn’t here to perch on my shoulder.”  
  
“Well, the funny thing is—Cas—“ and Dean is impressed when Mom’s glance slides to the stuffed toy in his lap. “I’m really only concerned if people scare my son.”  
  
“Cas doesn’t scare me, Mom,” Dean says, biting back on the bit that says most of the time because sometimes—sometimes when Dean looks into Cas’s eyes, so blue, too blue for glass eyes, Dean thought those eyes would never end, staring so fixedly back at him, and that was kind of frightening—or sometimes when Cas would roar or growl unexpectedly that was scary and then other times—just knowing that Cas was an angel, that Cas had brought xemself down just to watch over Dean—wow, who the heck did that? And how wasn’t that supposed to be frightening?  
  
But Mom wouldn’t get that—because growing up is hard and nobody understands.  
  
So he could show her, prove to her once and for all that Cas—well, Cas was Cas. He pushes himself from her lap, brushes off his legs and his shorts, bare toes scrabbling for a hold in the dirt.  
  
“What are you doing?” Mom says.  
  
Dean draws himself up, puffs up his chest. “Be not afraid, Mother, for I bring you tidings of great joy.” He’s only a little afraid when Mom doesn’t even crack a smile, when she stares at him with her huge eyes, unblinking in the fire and the smoke. “That Cas is my friend.”  
  
“Alright,” Mary says –  
  
just as Cas says, “What are you doing?”  
  
Cas is huge beside Dean, casting the fire in shadow, while the orange of xyr coat glows like embers, like xe is truly made of fire and flame. Dean shivers a little, skin goose-pimpling, buzzing with nerves. Dean kneels before xem, and maybe or maybe he doesn’t notice the way Cas shifts xyr weight, shuffles just the tiniest bit on xyr paws.  
  
“What are you afraid of, Mom?” Dean says without looking away from Cas, “and I’ll prove to you otherwise.”  
  
Mary shifts uncomfortably in her seat, arms folded across her stomach. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. The great big bad wolf ate up somebody’s daughter—who’s to say that a tiger won’t do the same to my son—“ but she doesn’t look at Dean when she says it, but her eyes are fixed on the tiger at Dean’s feet.  
  
“Cas would never eat me.” Dean smiles at Cas. “Don’t step on that fish, Castiel,” he whispers, and if Mom hears him she doesn’t say anything. “Can I touch you, Cas?” he breathes.  
  
“Anything you wish,” Cas says, in that purr-growl of xyr, the kind that sent shivers up Dean’s spine. Dean brings xyr hands to cup Cas’s face, smiling when he feels the stiff prickle of xyr whiskers, then stroking his fingers downwards towards xyr powerful jaws, thumbs smoothing their way along Cas’s thin lips rimmed with pink, coaxing Cas to open xyr mouth and then Cas does, bearing xyr maw before Dean, the curving dip of xyr pink tongue, the bright flashes of xyr fangs.  
  
“Watch close, Mom,” Dean whispers, unable to tear his eyes away from the tunnel of Cas’s mouth.--“watch close—because—because you have nothing to fear--Cas would never hurt me—“ and he squeezes his eyes shut tight as they can go, sucks in a deep breath like he’s going to belly flop into the deep end of a pool, and puts his head into Cas’s mouth.  
  
Fangs scrape against his scalp, and Cas’s tongue is damp against Dean’s cheek. Don’t open your eyes, he told himself, don’t open your eyes. He thinks that, somewhere, he can hear the heart inside Castiel thudding like a drum, like thunder, like somebody pounding against a door let me out, let me out, let me out.  
  
He steps away from Cas, and Cas closes xyr mouth, licks xyr chops without looking at Dean. “Are you satisfied?”  
  
And Dean turns, echoes the question, faltering only when he sees Mom flapping a polaroid through the air, wondering how he could have failed to hear the click and flash of the camera. “Mom?”  
  
“I took a picture,” Mom says. “For posterity.”  
  
And when Dean looks, it’s just—just him, him smushing his face against a stuffed tiger toy. Just him with his eyes half closed, some kind of glazed up smile he’s never seen and gosh, does his face really look like that, all opened up and vulnerable and what the heck where are the tiger’s jaws?  
  
“You don’t believe me,” Dean says.  
  
Mom doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t pick up the tiger from the dirt. “Take Cas and go to bed,” she says. “Tomorrow is a brand new day.” 

 

“Yes, Dean.”  
  
“Why couldn’t Mom see us? What was the point? She’s never going to believe me, not even the camera believes me.”  
  
“This is not my true form, Dean. It can be overwhelming to some humans.”  
  
“But I don’t see you as a toy even when Mom does see you as a toy,” Dean says. “Sometimes, when you’re with me, it’s like you’re a toy and sometimes like you’re a tiger, like now, or sometimes like you’re both at the same time which totally defies the laws of physics—“  
  
“Each humans has their own individual perception of me, Dean,” Cas says.  
  
“But Mom needs to know, she needs to know. She thinks you’re dangerous.”  
  
“I am dangerous. Just not to you,” Cas says. “Mary Winchester needs faith, and she will find it in her own good time.” Cas stretches. “Go to sleep, Dean. It doesn’t matter that she does not believe. It doesn’t change anything.”  
  
“I care though,” Dean says. “I care. Why can’t you reveal yourself to her?”  
  
“Because those are not our orders,” Cas says.  
  
Dean swallows the lump that grew in his throat. “What do you mean,” he whispers. “What are your orders?”  
  
“To watch over the righteous children,” Castiel says. “To guard them as they sleep. Big things afoot.”  
  
Dean’s cold inside, cold where his heart is. “How big?”  
  
“Big,” Cas says.  
  
“Pop Quiz on material you haven’t studied big or end of the world big?” Dean says and maybe his voice shakes a little bit—that’s to be expected. Sure it’d be nice if the entire school fell into a cavernous crack as the world split apart, but then there wouldn’t be anymore Star Trek or apple pie or running around with Jo on the grass until the sky whirls around them, until they flop to the ground, spinning and spinning until their words were butterfly kisses puffed from their lungs.  
  
“The world will never end—not as long as we walk the earth,” Cas says. “And not as long as there are people like you—“  
  
“—and people like Jo?”  
  
“—Yes. And people like Jo.”  
  
“What do we do?” Dean asks, burying his cold hands into Cas’s fur, feeling the steady thud-thud of xyr heart.  
  
“You end it,” Cas says.  
  
“Says who?” Dean says.  
  
“And the Lord spoke, and saw that it was good.”  
  
Dean snorts, draws his sleeping bag up over his head. “Well. If the Lord so spake, then why couldn’t he have spoken the world so that it won’t, you know, be endangered. At all. Like, why the song and dance, the jumping through hoops of flaming fire, hoping and praying you don’t get burned.”  
  
“The Lord—“  
  
“Don’t you even say what I think you’re about to say,” Dean says. “Because that’s just crud.”  
  
“Whatever you say, Dean Winchester.”  
  
“That right whatever I say. Does that mean I win by default? Is that the angel way of saying uncle?”  
  
Cas rolls over onto xyr side, white belly bared towards Dean. “I hadn’t been aware we were in a contest.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Dean says. “Everything is. And in this case, you defaulted to me. How does it feel,” Dean says, and he can’t seem to stop himself from talking, from grinning up at Cas all mischievious and playful—“losing to a puny human like me.”  
  
Cas says nothing, but xyr eyes are bright, and xyr mouth open a little, panting a little, like xe had just finished running and running after a deer, after Dean, and that got Dean thinking—would Cas run after him? Run a thousand miles?  
  
“Of course,” Cas says—  
  
and Dean jerks, curling in on himself  
  
“—of course there is a difference between losing a battle and losing a war. Now go to sleep.”

 

Dean figures it would be storming when they finally crawl into town—rain lashing the windows, lightning searing the sky, thunder rattling his teeth. They slip and slide sometimes, Mom clutching her seat and tearing the inside of her lip with her molars (Dean can see the way her teeth hollows and creases in the flickering white light) and he holds Cas closer to him, shoving the toy up beneath his shirt, and they’re almost home, everything is almost over when Dean, nose pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass, sees the Finnerman kids in the front yard. Their clothes are plastered to their bodies, they’re not alone because Meg and Ruby are there too, and they’re pushing and shoving at each other, and Meg’s screaming, Ruby alternatively holding her back, and Dean says, “Mom—“ but can’t continue not with the way bladed lightning slashes through the tree and hits Ruby and Meg or is it Meg and Ruby the light is gone so fast, leaving spots in Dean’s eyes that he tries to blink away even though Dad’s slammed the breaks and the car’s skidding back and forth, and Mary is screaming, “Oh my god, oh my god,” over and over before the car jerks to a halt.  
  
Mom falls over herself trying to get out and even Dean slithers from his seatbelt, barely even noticing the way Cas’s gripping the cuff of his shirt with xyr fangs, not hearing the rip of the shirt as he stumbles forward, rain streaming from his eyes and down his face. He spares a glance back, surprised to see Dad huddled in the car, head on the steering wheel, body jerking with every clap of the thunder.  
  
Jael Finnerman stares at the two girls, then at the tree, then back again, but Danny’s fallen to his knees before the tree’s roots, screaming, pounding the bark with his fists. Dean feels the weird weight of his eyes seeing two things at once because suddenly the tree’s not a tree anymore, with wings, wings, wings arching from horizon to horizon and it’s not just rain, it’s the tree, and it’s just not lightning, it’s the tree, and it’s not just thunder, it’s the tree speaking in a language that Dean can’t understand, but maybe Cas can because xe is right there, standing next to the tree, bowing to the tree, tail tucked to xyr haunches, and when Dean blinks again, Anna in Mr. Buns is there too, rain making her ears soggy and floppy.  
  
Dean staggers to them—“What’s happened, what’s happened” and Cas roars at him, roars with xyr gaping jaws that look red in the light, like they’re dripping with blood, and Anna’s tugging at his hand with her worn paw, pulling him away, murmuring, “Don’t look, Dean, don’t look.”  
  
Mom’s leaning over the girls, fingers at their neck, trying CPR, and it’s wrong, everything is so, so wrong, that Dean feels like he’s going to vomit and maybe he does, on his knees in the wet grass, getting slick mud in between his fingers, not even crying out when Jael accidentally stomps on them as she marches to the tree, stands before it with her fists clenched at her sides—and maybe, maybe the air stills for a moment because Dean can understand Danny, can hear him scream, “You lied to us! That is not the way of God, that is not the way of mercy—of, of righteousness!“  
  
And Dean understands, it’s not a tree, it’s an angel, an angel in the ground, and Dean shakes, rain water pouring down his neck, wonders how many more of them there are, how many more righteous kids there are  
  
Jael raises her voice, and it breaks under the weight in the air, and her body shakes and Dean realizes that she’s as scared and frightened as he is and oh my god does she see Cas, does she see xem as Dean can barely bear to look upon xem now, larger than any tiger has any right to be, with too many heads and too many mouths and too many eyes—but she still says, “Bring them back, or I’ll chop you right down to the ground. Don’t think I don’t know where my Daddy’s axe is.”  
  
The tree laughs, rustling its branches together, that I, Raphael do not suffer the wicked to live and the voice pushes the Finnerman children together, and they cling to each other’s shoulders, to each other’s bodies, lest the wind of the angel’s voice tear them apart.  
  
Mom’s still trying to revive the girls via CPR, and she screams a little when Meg sucks down a breath, Mom’s face so close to hers, and Ruby does the same beside her, sucking down air and water and coughing as they sit up, their eyes flashing black in the light—  
  
\--and the storm breaks, the wind ceases. Raphael is silent now, and Cas has only one head again and is mostly like a toy, Dean thinks, but he’s got his eyes screwed shut so that he won’t feel the tug of seeing both ways because it’s too much, everything is much too much, and Anna’s gone, and the only noise is the sound coming out of his own throat, of Jael and Danny crying, and the only silent ones are Meg and Ruby (eyes back to normal, Dean sees, peeking between his fingers) and Mary’s  hugging them, clutching them to her chest even though Dean doesn’t think she knows their names, and people are talking, talking, talking.  
  
Cas attempts to go to the Finnerman kids, but they shoo xem off, they hiccough, “We don’t need angels—no. more. angels.”  
  
And Cas leaves them alone, and Dean wraps his arms around xyr shoulders, buries xyr head in the scruff of xyr neck. “What’s happened,” Dean says.  
  
“An abomination,” Cas says, and Dean’s dizzy with gratitude that Cas didn’t say something like nothing.  
  
“Who? What?” And Dean follows the crystal blue stare of xyr’s eyes to Meg and Ruby who are the most calm of them all, despite being struck by lightning.  
  
“They have no place in the Kingdom of God,” Cas says.  
  
“What?” Dean says. “The heck? You don’t just say things like that.”  
  
“You’re so anxious to forget that you yourself have asked me to eat them on occasion,” Cas says mildly. “Quite the change of heart. But typical of humans.”  
  
“No, no, no,” Dean says. “Hold up. I don’t actually mean-mean-mean it. Not cross-my-heart-hope-to-die mean it when I say stuff like that.”  
  
“Then you shouldn’t say it,” Cas says.  
  
“What’d they do? Why can’t they go to heaven like everybody else?”  
  
“That is none of your concern.” Cas’s striped tiger body blocks the girls from Dean’s sight.  
  
Dean sits back on his haunches, hugs his arms tight across his chest. “I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about—about everything.” He looks at his knees, starting when Cas licks a rough stripe across his fingers, then leaning into the touch. “Is everything okay, Cas? Is everything going to be okay?”  
  
“It will be,” Cas says.  
  
“But what about for them?”  
  
Cas’s breath is hot against Dean’s check. “They say there’s forgiveness for everyone—for those who seek it.”  
  
“Even for them? But what could they have done? They’re just kids, Cas, kids--like, like me and Jael and Danny.”  
  
Cas says nothing—Dean can’t even hear a purr or a growl or even the softest breath come from xyr throat.  
  
“Cas?”  
  
But then Mom’s scooping him up in her arms, crushing him, and bundling him up into the car, asking if he’s okay, and Dean tries to say that he is, that everything is fine (Cas said so), but the words won’t come out and she won’t let them anyway, and they’re driving, they’re driving, they’re pulling into their own driveway, and they’re getting out.  
  
They’re opening the back.  
  
They’re really, really going to unload the van now, even after everything, and why wouldn’t they if everything is fine, so Dean just bites his tongue.  
  
When they get home, Dad slouches off, mumbling about work and coworkers and that he needs to use Mom’s impala since their van is still full of camping crap. Dean sees the way Mom’s shoulders tense, remembers how she hates it when Dad drives her baby because he never treats her proper, and she says, “Why don’t you just help us unpack and then you can take the van, alright?”  
  
And Dad just says, “Jesus, Mary, I hadn’t realized that car was so damn important to you or that I had to do every fucking thing. I’ll just fucking walk then,” and then he’s gone, gone, gone, steadily turning into a pin-prick speck down the street, down block after block, until he’s finally gone and Cas is there, a steady weight against his thigh, and Mom’s asking him to help her with the boxes and the suitcases, so Dean does, dragging his luggage out of the car, hauling it up the stairs, and it’s easier, it’s so much easier to do that than to remember two bodies on the ground or an immense tree or a Cas that didn’t look like his Cas at all.  
  
He helps Mom sort the dirty laundry, stinking of sweat and bug spray, so that she can wash them, go ahead and get all the hard work over with, so that she could lounge with crap tv later.  
  
“Do I get to watch, too?” Dean asks because he needs more images, he needs to re-write over his brain.  
  
“You have school tomorrow, young man,” she says, so Dean just scowls.  
  
“Fine,” he says.  
  
“Don’t take that tone,” she says. “You should show me some respect,” and Dean laughs, tells her that’s what Cas had told him once, and then suddenly the room drops ten degrees and nobody’s smiling, but he’s only got one foot on the stair before Mary calls him back. “About tonight, Dean—“ and she licks her lips. “We saw a miracle. Those girls were dead, and then they weren’t.”  
  
“That was no miracle,” Cas says but Mom doesn’t hear, just looking at Dean with a weird smile not quite smile on her face.  
  
“That’s not what Cas says.” Dean fiddles with the hem of his shirt, swallowing hard as Cas continues to speak, wishing that xe would shut up just shut up because he doesn’t want to remember. “Xe says it was written in their eyes—huh?” he asks, turning towards Cas, “what the heck does that mean?”  
  
Mary’s throat works up and down, mouth twitching, lips twisting. “What else does Cas say?”  
  
Dean snorts. “Nothing. So. Typical.”  
  
“I see,” Mary says. “Good night, Dean.”  
  
“What about Cas?” Dean says, remembering that passage Cas had once said, about reaping burning coals. See how xe feels about xyr disappearing act when Dean snags one of Mom’s good night kiss specials on the forehead for Cas.  
  
“What about Cas?”  
  
“Don’t you want to say goodnight to xem too?”  
  
Mary reaches for his shoulders, smooths his shirt there. “For the person who fills my son’s ears with so many unpleasant things?” She kisses the top of his head. “I don’t think so.”  
  
“Xe tells the truth,” Dean says, protesting feebly.  
  
“Castiel is a toy—“ but when Dean goes to argue, Mary puts her fingers over his lips, and says, “Good night, Dean” -- so Dean just goes upstairs and does his homework like a good kid, Cas beside him. It’s hard to concentrate though because, even though they had already eaten at their kitchen table, their small kitchen table when all of them were crowded around it, yet so big, so inescapably big when one of them wasn’t there, Dean couldn’t stop being hungry, and it was easy to eat, easy to focus on the fork going into his mouth and scooping up bits on its silver tines instead of the forked jagged edge of light splitting the sky in pieces.  
  
“You want something to eat, Cas?” Dean says finally even though Cas had refused to speak more about the evening and maybe Dean could understand that feeling, of not wanting it to exist and not speaking about it because words made things real which is why Dean hated it when Dad was never there to say, Goodnight Dean, Don’t let the bed bugs bite, Dean, I love you, Dean. He throws down his pencil. “Just asking because I think I’m gonna go get something for me.” He doesn’t say that food would fill xem up with something other than what happened, what they had seen, what they had heard, that sometimes food can just fill up the hollow in between spaces where words leave in your body.  
  
Cas wouldn’t get it.  
  
Cas never got stuff like that.  
  
“I have developed a taste for—tuna,” Cas says, carefully.  
  
Dean slides down to the floor, floor cold and clammy against his bare feet. “Wait here—I’ll go get some all stealthy like cause I’m cool like that. Cool like Batman.”  
  
“I don’t understand that reference,” Cas says.  
  
“Oh my gosh, Cas. You heathen. There’s some comics over there under my bed if you’d like to educate yourself, but don’t wrinkle the pages! Or tear them up with your claws.”  
  
He creeps down the stairs—but he needn’t have bothered. Mom’s talking to someone on the phone. “After what happened tonight--I just don’t know what to do, Ellen,” she says, soft and low like her throat’s clamping down on something, like she wants to cuss but she won’t—but not quite like that because her voice lacks the edge, and Dean almost forgets about the tuna, about his hunger, because she sounds so sad, she sounds like Jo when her father never came back from his hunting trip (sometimes Dean can never forgive himself for wanting to say, serves him right for wanting to kill Bambi when she first approached Dean, when she first said, something’s happened to dad, that he’s on a hunting trip and hasn’t been home for a few days, back in those days when Dean thought dead and missing fathers happened to other people, to people like Meg), the way she sounded before she cried and cried into the grass, staining her cheeks a muddy green.    
  
“I wanted to get out,” Mom is saying. “I wanted a family—“ and the tinny, distant voice of Ellen cuts her off, too far away for Dean to hear. Dean knows he should move, that he shouldn’t watch, shouldn’t listen, but he can’t get his feet to tiptoe forward, can’t stop watching his mother wipe her eyes with her knuckles already fisted like she wanted to throw a punch at someone, anyone. “John—doesn’t want—even before, he was happy and then, now—with the bills and the expenses and the debt—all he ever says is that—we made a mistake. And now, it’s going to happen again.” Ellen tries to talk, but Mary rushes over her. “I just wanted to be safe—and I can’t. The very worst thing—is for my children to be raised like I was, with a father like mine. And, and Ellen--” her voice drops the way an echo bottoms out into space—“it’s happening again—they’re here, and I can’t, I can’t—they’re just kids--“  
  
Dean’s legs finally finds themselves, and he’s crawling, crawling to the end table with its sweeping table cover that reaches the floor like a skirt, and he hides under it, hides under the table, fingers in his ears. He doesn’t want to hear anymore, doesn’t want to hear about his father.  
  
And when Mom hangs up the phone after an age with a soft click, when she crosses the living room in her bare feet, flips off the switch, and goes upstairs to shower, Dean crawls out from under the table, beelines it towards the kitchen cupboard where stacks of canned tuna in oil are waiting, and he drags them down, fills his shirt with can after can, and then fetches the can opener from the drawer before dashing upstairs and bursting into his room, slamming the door behind him.  
  
He gives half to Cas, and saves the rest for himself, lining them up in a row so that he can open them.  
  
“Cas,” he says, hesitant, over the crank of the opener. “What’s wrong with Mom? Why is she so unhappy?”  
  
“We don’t always get what we need, Dean,” Cas says, voice thick and low, breath thick with tuna and something that gives Dean a metallic taste in his mouth.  
  
“What does she need,” Dean says, clutching the desk with his fist, head bowed. “Tell me so that I can get it for her.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Cas says.  
  
“What do you mean you don’t know,” Dean says, the words filling up his throat, spitting out of his mouth—“you know everything—you knew about tonight—“ as he flings himself around, unable to continue when he sees the mess on his bed, the tuna juice splattered across the coverlet, the way the cans have been rended open, how some cans are missing pieces of themselves, and how Cas has got red on xem, red on xyr pink nose, xyr pink tongue sliced into red pieces, and red spit foaming around xyr mouth, bubbling along the sleek edge of xyr lips.  
  
Dean gasps, slams his palm against his eyes. “What the hell,” he cries, “what the hell did you do to yourself, Cas—“  
  
And when he opens them, everything is fine. The cans of tuna, ripped apart, gone. The oil and the water, gone. The redness, gone.  
  
“I’m an angel,” Cas says. “I can stop whenever I want.”  
  
And Dean crawls up the bed towards Cas – “What the hell, Cas” – fingers tracing the orange and black stripes—“What the hell, Cas—“ looking for the ones that had been red, hand cradling the huge jaw once more, but there’s nothing there but what all great cats have (what a great big mouth you have, Cas, what great teeth you have, Cas, great enough to tear metal apart, what blue eyes you have, Cas) until Dean’s arms are wrapped tight around Cas’s shoulders, broad chest clutched to Dean’s narrow frame, Cas’s head heavy against his shoulder, and he says, “If you were hungry, you could have just waited for me—I would have opened them for you since I have opposable thumbs and all,” and he slips from under Cas’s giant paws, grabs one of the open cans of tuna and, because he had forgotten to bring forks or spoons, dips his fingers into the meat, holds his hand out for Cas—  
  
And Cas reaches out, licks every bit of tuna up with xyr tongue (and if, perhaps, a fang snags or tugs a little on Dean’s skin, who’s to say it means anything at all) until every single can is empty and Dean’s hand is sticky with cat spit.

 

At school, Dean lolls in his chair, feet crossed at his ankles, one hand splayed on his paper work (perhaps there are scabs pocking the skin there, but who’s to say where they came from, coulda come from anywhere), the other draped over Cas’s head, which somehow fits comfortably in his palm.  
  
He thought it would be different, after that night in the rain, with the tree. Thinks that maybe Meg and Ruby would be different—and they are—they’re worse. They swagger in with their eyes flashing black in the light and when they laugh at him, hard, splintering into his skin when he says he’s glad to see them, he wonders what in ever loving heck makes them so gosh darn ornery.  
  
So he tears off a corner of paper, scrawls one of the insults that Meg had hurled at him, you ‘fraid? ‘fraid of little old us when Meg had challenged Dean to arm wrestle when he said she was just a girl, when she had wanted to play ball, gonna cry? Gonna cry for daddy? Oh I forgot, you don’t have one [NEITHER DO YOU]. He puts a scrap in his mouth, wads it up into a ball with a curl of his tongue, thick and soggy with his saliva, before spitting it out at the back of Ruby’s head. She jerks around, snarling, her sister, Meg, chewing a pencil between her teeth, and Dean just grins at them, launches another one of the scribed up scraps in their direction, until Ms. Collins mildly calls for order, order or do I have to send you to the principle,  Mr. Winchester.  
  
Ruby snorts aside into her hair, while Meg says, “Nothing like asking our preference—you know, the aggrieved parties in this debacle“ as she flicks a slicked up ball of paper into the aisle.  
  
The lesson resumes only after Ms. Collins loudly hems her throat, and it’s nouns and verbs and what the heck is a dangling participle for the rest of the hour, until they break for recess and Dean suddenly finds himself face to face with Meg and Ruby.  
  
“You think you’re tough, doing what you did?” Ruby asks.  
  
Meg leans in close to Ruby, hisses between her teeth—“You spineless sap.”  
  
Dean jerks away from her, Cas’s stuffed body bumping against his thigh. “Well at least I ain’t never died before.” And he smirks at them, hoping they don’t pounce on the careless out he’s left for them, the stinging retort they’ll nettle him with.  
  
Right on cue, Ruby snarls, “Well, we’ve come back to life haven’t we?” Then she leans in close, whispering, “Maybe you won’t be so lucky. I hope you’re not. I hope you suffer—I hope I’m there to hear you scream.”  
  
Dean laughs, then. “I have angels watching over me—who did you ever have?” In the corner of his eye, Dean sees Cas stiffen, growling in the soft hollow of xyr throat.  
  
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about anything,” Meg says, even as Ruby pulls her away down the hall, to disappear amidst the surge of students.  “You don’t even know who we are—“ jerking a thumb to Ruby and then to herself – “or me or anyone.”  
  
“I know who you are--,” Dean says, feeling the words rush up through his throat, exhilarated with electricity, words he’d heard his Daddy say on occasion, and he says them now: “You’re a bitch.”  
  
Both of them freeze, Ruby still, Meg shifting her neck hard so that it cracks and pops over her shoulders, clenching and unclenching her knuckles. “Don’t call us that,” Ruby says, her voice low, as she tugs Meg by her sleeve. “Don’t call us that ever again. Or are you trying to make someone proud by using words like a big grown up? Trying to make Daddy proud, huh? Some man he is—does it make him feel big to put another person down?” They lean in closer. “Does it make you feel big? Big and strong, like your Daddy? You think you’ll come home and you’ll tell him the story of this, and he’ll say, good job, Deano. Cookie for you.”  
  
Dean looks down at Cas, still just sitting there in his backpack, like xe doesn’t know Dean’s been praying to xem to gobble up those girls, to eat them alive, for scraping salt into his wounds, like they wanted to see him cry—and it’s hard to think those thoughts, to remember the times he had told Cas he hadn’t meant it (but what if he did really what did that say about him), and to remember that he’s engaged in a verbal sparring match with them, nope, can’t let them get the jump on him with another cruel and cutting insult that sliced into his marrow.  “Go to hell,” he says, voice grating in his throat. “Both of you.”  
  
Ruby breaks away to circle behind Dean, and he tries not to edge away from them because no way is he scared of a couple of classmates, right, right, Cas? But if Cas says anything back, Dean misses it as Meg drawls close to his ear, “I’m already there.”  
  
“Hell is words clawing under your skin, never letting go,” Ruby says behind him.  
  
“I have a secret for you,” Meg says in a soft voice. “We’re going to heaven.” She directs her gaze to the tiger poking out of Dean’s backpack. “Isn’t that right, Clarence? We’re all going to heaven.”  
  
They all three lean in a little closer to the stuffed tiger, and Dean wonders, wildly, if they actually see Cas, Castiel, a gosh darn angel, or if they’re fooling with him, if they’re messing with him, if they’re scrawling clown faces on the yearbook photos, and then there’s Cas’s voice in his ear, whispering there is no place for them in heaven—god our father would never allow them entry, and Dean can’t tell if Cas’s voice is sad or whatever, but he says it anyway, “Cas says otherwise. And Cas is an angel and I think angels know better than you.”  
  
And he barely has time to register the way Meg’s throat works up and down before her fist collides with his nose, and there’s a river of warm thick stuff flowing from his nostrils into his mouth, painting his lips red, and she does it again, and his head spins and spins like a carasol going too fast, much too fast, and she does it again so hard he falls backwards against Ruby, and it’s only then, when Meg steps into the space between the v of legs, with Ruby’s arms around his torso, forcing his hands—already half-shaped into loose fists and when the heck had that happened--down back to his sides, that it stops (and is it Ruby telling them to stop, or is it Cas, or is it both of them, he can’t tell with the way his ears are ringing), and then there’s the principle and school security pushing them into offices and they’re all suspended for fighting and parents are called and everyone is unhappy as Meg examines the way her skin has split over the bone of her knuckles.  
  
“Did he really say that word?” is the only thing Mom says during the whole thing, and when Dean nods along with the principle, Mom shakes her head, gold curls curtaining her face and Dean is glad, glad that he can’t see the way the shadows in her eyes because he doesn’t think he could possibly bear it.  
  
In the car, the silence is hard and stony, scraping across Dean’s eardrums until the silence just itches deep inside, worming its way into his brain, and he just wishes she’d do anything, put anything on, so he reaches to turn on the classic rock station, but she just flips it back off, stifling him with the force of her glare, so Dean sits on his hands, and hums metallica.  
  
Her knuckles are white, fisting the car like she could throttle it. He wonders if she’s thinking about him, if she wishes her hands were around his neck, and his belly goes cold until he feels the heat of Cas’s breath against his neck and down his shirt, warming up that pit of ice that’s making his whole body numb.  
  
“She’s not thinking that,” Cas whispers.  
  
“What. Can you read minds now? I thought you said you weren’t omni-science,” Dean whispers back.  
  
“You think that Mary doesn’t also pray?” Cas just says.  
  
“What does she pray for?” Dean says.  
  
Cas leans towards Mary, rests xyr great jaw on her shoulder, and Dean wonders how on earth she cannot see, cannot feel. “For you.”  
  
“For me what?”  
  
Castiel licks xyr chops, licks xyr pink nose, before turning back to Dean, resting xyr head in his lap. “Just for you.”  
  
Dean shuffles uncomfortably in his seat, pretends that Cas said something useful and comforting like that Dad won’t be too mad when he gets home, won’t be too mad he’s been suspended from school, so he flips down the visor to reveal the palm-sized mirror nestled in the leather. His face is black and blue and there’s still a smudge of blood along his lips.  
  
“Any chance that you’ll heal this up, Cas?”  
  
Cas shifts away from Dean, haunches nearly slipping off his lap. “No.”  
  
“Come on,” Dean whines. “Why not? It’s not like you don’t have the power. It’s not like you’re not an angel.”  
  
“Because,” Cas says.  
  
“Because why?”  
  
Cas leans xyr head back then, glass button eyes darker, stormier, and Dean shivers under the force of their gaze. “Because I would not wish hell on anyone, nor would I, an angel, ever desire to walk into the inferno. Especially when they have already walked there—you’ve seen it in their eyes.”  
  
“I don’t get it,” Dean says. “How could they have gone to hell. It was only what—minutes?” He can’t bring himself to really say it.  
  
“Hell runs on a different time,” Cas says. “Down there—it was much longer.”  
  
“What happened to them?” Dean says. “What happened to them, Cas?”  
  
“What happens to all human souls in hell, Dean.” Cas won’t look at him, and Dean is almost glad. “They became demons. And they crawled their way out because hell is hell and there was no one to save them.”  
  
Dean forces himself to remember back to the night, to the tree and the lightening, and the voice in the thunder. “Why did Raphael send them to that place?”  
  
“Because Meg wanted to go to heaven,” Cas says. “Aren’t you listening?”  
  
“But everyone wants to go to heaven, Cas! I want to go to heaven—are you going to smite me, Cas, for just wanting to go to heaven?” And he steels himself, flexing his butt muscles even though he’s sitting down, flexing them because it never hurt so much when Dad hit him there when he’d done something wrong.  
  
“No—“ Cas says. “You are the righteous man—“  
  
“Shut up about that!” Dean cries out, palms over his ears. “Shut up.”  
  
“Her father is Lucifer, Dean. She was born of angels falling into lust and copulating with humans. She is not like you. You have a place in heaven.”  
  
“Just ‘cause my dad’s human?” Dean says. “Is that the only reason? How’s that fair?”  
  
Cas won’t look at him, just looks out the window. “You are the righteous man. God has a plan for you.”  
  
“How is that fair?” Dean says, almost helplessly. But when Cas refuses to say anything—probably because xe knows, xe knows he’s right even if xe won’t admit it--Dean swallows hard, wonders where the heck the smart in his eyes came from. “Oh,” he somehow manages to whisper around the lump in throat. He can’t bear to look at Cas, not with the way xyr back is towards him, not with the way xyr eyes are so cold and hard, so he looks back up into the mirror, scrubs his wrist over his red-red mouth, but the blood doesn’t come off, and it’s dried up to a rust-brown, and it looks like there’s dirt on his face, like he’s been shoved face first into the earth and come off the wrong side of good, so he says, “Well, couldn’t you at least help me clean this off?”  
  
“No,” Cas says, quick, before Dean’s even had a chance to finish the sentence, barely.  
  
“Please,” Dean says. “You say you’re always watching over me, but yet look at this face,” and he gestures to all of him, “does this look like the face of someone watched over by their own personal guardian angel?”  
  
“I’ve already explained why,” Cas tries to say—  
  
\--but Dean’s already interrupting him. “The pain’s still there. And isn’t that where the real lesson is? That’s what Dad says anyway.”  
  
Cas is silent for a moment before whispering, “Mine too—“ and then xe’s paws are on Dean’s shoulder, xyr body boxing Dean against the corner of the car, xyr head blocking the burning glow of the dying sun, and then xyr tongue lolling between a bed of teeth, before reaching, reaching and Dean can’t stop staring, can’t stop staring at the sharp barbs that prick the velvet pink of it, at the way xe’s curled it into a spoon, at the way it tickles like a beard when xe scrapes the tongue, that great, pink tongue, across Dean’s mouth, across his lips, licking up the blood, every last crusted drop of it to xemself, punctuated by the hard press of fang against his cheek—  
  
\--and the way they’re face to face and eye to eye, and Dean can’t stop staring at the way Cas’s throat works up and down, swallowing up Dean’s blood like he was nothing, like he was a bit of tuna juice, and then there’s just the blue glass of xyr eye locked onto Dean’s, and then Mom jerks to a stop, almost making a yellow but not quite before it flips to red, and Dean’s eyes are slammed shut as he hurls forwards into space, caught by Cas’s bracing body and the jerk of the seatbelt against his chest, shunting the air out of his lungs, the prick and sting of it forcing his eyes shut, and when Mom keeps asking, are you okay, are you okay, baby, Dean just nods and pries his eyes open, but Cas is gone, well not really gone, but xe’s holed xemself up in Dean’s backpack, making xem so tiny that xe might as well be a toy, and nothing Dean can say can make xem talk about what had just happened and Dean just shouts, “Well whatever,” and folds his arms hard across his chest while Mom tells him not to take that tone with her even though Dean has no clue what in heck she had been talking about in the first place as he looks at his face in the mirror, at his  skin, all shiny and clean.  
  
They pull into their driveway, and they climb out of the impala, Mom telling him to go upstairs and do his homework but Dean lingers behind on the front porch, even though Mom’s already gone in, and he wonders if she’ll say something about having hot chocolate waiting for him like she always did before on the cold, nippy days like today, but she says nothing, and he sighs, tugs the backpack further up his shoulder so that it cuts into his neck, and clambers up to his room to do his homework before Mom tells him to do it.  
  
He can be a good boy, if he really tries. If he really wants to.  
  
A few hours later, Dean hears Dad stomp into the house, hears him drape his coat over the couch, hears him holler at Mary for a goddamn beer. Then there’s Mary calling Dean down for dinner and Cas is still hidden up in Dean’s backpack, so Dean just shakes his head and slides down the stairs without xem (what does he care if Cas doesn’t join him for dinner, the sour puss), and when Dad sees his face—when Dad sees his face, he doesn’t even finish the smooth sweep of his bottle to his mouth.  
  
Just sort of pauses, takes Dean in long and hard enough that he shuffles on his feet. Mary’s stopped too, paused mid-scoop in dumping fake mashed taters onto their plates, watching Dad, mouth already pursed up to mutter a warning John and the only thing that Dean can do, the only gosh darn thing, is to scrape his shoe up his calf, wrinkling up his pants, mumbling something that sounds vaguely like, “Hey, Dad.”  
  
“What the hell happened to you?” Dad says.  
  
“School fight,” Dean says.  
  
“Knocked his ass down?” John asks, flexing his muscles in what Dean is going to assume is a playful manner even as his throat works down more beer.  
  
Dean’s eye darts towards Mary, wonders how white and small a lie has to be so it’s virtually not a lie. He nods half-heartedly, slides into his seat, and pushes his food around. “Hey,” he says, looking around as Mom and Dad sit down. “Doesn’t this look like E.T.’s puke to you?”  
  
And then Mom tells him to not be gross at the dinner table and Dad says to eat what’s put on his plate until its licked clean cuz there are children starving out on the streets so he should be fucking thankful, and Dean is decidedly grateful that they’re not talking about what happened at school anymore but he just nods and nods and nods as he pushes his food around, not even remotely hungry, afraid that if he even swallowed a bite he’d just throw it up again anyway.  
  
Maybe he hadn’t been that far off point. Maybe it really was alien puke. Maybe it was really his.  
  
Cas, he prays with all his might, Cas.  
  
And then Cas is there, heavy warm weight beside him, and Dean doesn’t even bother asking if Cas is hungry because yeah, he gets it, angels don’t need to eat.  
  
But Cas agrees to eat his dinner, but refuses to eat the potatoes by themselves, so Dean ends up cubing up his steak and slathering them in potatoes, sneaking each bite to Cas and nobody notices, not a single soul, and he thinks that maybe he’ll survive this dinner after all, might even escape without a further word, but nope.  
  
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten your face, little man,” Dad grunts, and Dean freezes, thumb sticky on his plate as he was about to dump it in the kitchen sink.  
  
Dad slumps over to the kitchen window, twitches the corner of the curtain aside.  
  
“You know. I really think that yard needs to be raked.” Dad eyes him up and down. “I think you should do it, don’t you? Builds moral fiber, moral character—‘cuz I really don’t think he should be fighting at school, right Mary?”  
  
“I think he’s been punished enough,” Mom says.  
  
Dad narrows his eyes at her, then slides his glance to Dean. “Go rake the leaves, Dean. Rake them for your old man—“ and he rubs the small of his back like it’s aching so bad. “That builds moral fiber too.”  
  
Dean’s mouth drops open. “But—“  
  
“Dean,” Mom says, quickly, voice razor-sharp. “Listen to your father.” But she’s not looking at him, just looking at Dad with eyes that look they could shrivel someone’s soul into a raisin.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says.  
  
It’s not until he’s outside, it’s not until the door’s slammed shut behind him, not until the autumn wind’s nipping at his ears like he’s all that, that Dean remembers Star Trek is about to come on. He makes a face, feels the heavy weight of the bruises hurt his cheek and his eye and his mouth, and he can’t stand it, can’t take it because yeah, mom’s right, he’s been punished enough, so he kicks the porch, stubs his toe which hurts even more and he can’t, he just can’t think straight, and he hurls the rake across the lawn because gosh—no—goddamnit he does not need this—this crap—when his face feels like someone tumbled the, the crap out of him, and Dean can’t help it, can’t help thinking back to Castiel, and he shouts, “But I’m the righteous man! I don’t need to do chores!”  
  
Nothing happens, just like nothing ever happens, and Dean storms off to where the rake’s skidded across the lawn, but then the door slams open and, before he knows it, Dad’s there, towering over him, shadow blocking out what remains of the sun and there’s nothing warm there, body failing to form a leeway to hide Dean from the wind even though Dad’s dragging him back to the house—“Don’t you sass me, boy, don’t you dare sass me—“  
  
And the next thing Dean knows, he’s in his room and his parents are shouting again and his ear hurts and his face hurts and he just wants to crawl into bed and pull the cover over his head, so that’s just right what he does, managing to crack an achy sort of smile when Cas crawls in after him, nestling up close.  
  
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas says, voice a low, more purr than smile, warming up his body with the buzz and thrum of it.  
  
“You don’t even know what it feels like,” Dean says, feeling petulant but not enough to turn his back on Cas because—god—wasn’t Cas supposed to be watching over him? What the heck? “Do even angels have rooms to be grounded in?”  
  
“I’ve had siblings sent to their--room,” Cas says. “I’ve seen some of them come back. Some of them not.”  
  
“Like Lucifer?”  
  
“Like Lucifer,” Cas echoes distantly. Then xe starts licking xyr paws, scraping the tongue across xyr rough pads, over and over and over. “At least you don’t have any siblings to start a war over it.”  
  
Dean feels cold, so brings Cas closer. “I’d never do that to my sibling. I’d never hate them like that.”  
  
“We don’t hate,” Cas says, voice quick and hard.  
  
“Fine. Whatever. Split straws. I’d never kill my sibling because that’s what war is, right?” Dean says, voice high, too high-pitched, too much like what dad would say was like a girl’s. “Killing each other.”  
  
Castiel doesn’t say anything, so Dean figures he’s hit it right, hit the nail on the head, so he plunges on. “I’d watch over my sibling. I’d make sure nothing got them in the night or under their beds. I’d watch over them all the time so that nothing and nobody could kill them.”  
  
“Well, you are the righteous man,” Cas says, stiff against him, unyielding instead of falling against Dean’s belly like xe usually does.  
  
Dean kicks himself because gosh, now Castiel’s talking about what it means to be—to be that—and he’s just blathering on and on, upset about being here, upset about today. “What? You mean, being righteous is like being an angel?” Angels are watching over you. But what else entailed being the righteous man? What was he supposed to do besides watching over his family?  
  
“One could say,” Cas says.  
  
“I’ll watch over my sibling,” Dean hisses into the Cas’s worn velvety ear. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to them, not ever.”  
  
Cas doesn’t do anything, really, just says, “Of course, Dean” then “Go to sleep, Dean” and it’s been an exhausting day so Dean does—Dean’s never had trouble going to sleep.  
  
When Jo sees him the next day, she says, “Dude. What happened to your face?”  
  
So Dean tells her and she just says, “Gosh, Dean, what the heck, picking fights and saying mean things” as she throws a clump of dirt at him, and, like a doofus, he squats to duck so instead of hitting him in the chest it shatters against his cheek.  
  
He rubs the sting away, says, “Oh no, not you too.”  
  
And she lets the one she already had poised to hurl drop to the floor, and she just slides in close, puts her palm to his cheek so that she can help brush the dirt away. They pause for a moment, Dean close to her, her hand on his cheek. “Thanks,” he says.  
  
She steps back, shakes out her hand. “Don’t mention it.”  
  
And he doesn’t, but sometimes he’ll put his hand where hers had been, just like he still sometimes traces where Cas’s tongue had cleaned him up.  
  
It feels good, tracing their shapes, remembering how it had felt warm and soft, light and heavy at the same time.

 

For some reason, Dad and Mom are calling tonight date night, which is something they’ve never had before. But Mom’s in the bathroom, complaining about how her clothes are tight and she’s getting so big with Dean’s little sibling and warning Dean to behave for his babysitter or else.  
  
Dad rolls his eyes as he fiddles with a tie. Dean can’t quite decide if he’s smiling or grimacing so he says, “Is this good?”  
  
“Is what good?” Dad clasps something silver in the body of the tie to his shirt.  
  
“I dunno,” Dean says. He stretches out on their queen sized bed, digs his feet into the folds of their heavy quilt. “It’ll make you happy?”  
  
“I’m always happy,” Dad says.  
  
Dean rolls onto his stomach, supports his chin with his fist. “So you won’t be drinking?”  
  
“Of course I’ll be drinking.” Dad licks his lips.  
  
“But Cas says you drink because you’re unhappy,” Dean says.  
  
Dad freezes, not even breathing, not even blinking. “Where did you hear that? Did your mom tell you that?”  
  
“Cas did—“ and Dean frowns. “I’m not lying, why does everyone think I’m lying.”  
  
“Because Cas is a toy, Dean,” and suddenly Dad is shouting at him, and maybe he’s got his hands on his shoulders too hard, thumbs digging into the tender hollow there – “a toy! A toy cannot speak—“  
  
“John—“ Mom’s voice cleaves them in two, like lightning splitting the sky. “Stop.”     
  
“Didn’t you teach your kid not to tell lie?” Dad says in her ear before leaving. “I’ll be out by the car.”  
  
Mom waits until they hear the front door close. “You alright, Dean?”  
  
He nods. “Of course I’m okay. I’m always okay.” He tilts his head up. “I’ve got you and Cas.”  
  
Her face twists up, and she does that thing where she puts her finger under her eyes, wiping even though nothing’s there. “Why would you say that?”  
  
“Because it’s true.”  
  
She leans down, gathers him in her arms. “I hope you’re right.”  
  
“I’m always right,” Dean says, giving her the cocky jut of his head, the cocky leer of his lip in that way that drove Jo up the wall.  
  
Mary draws back, waves her finger in his face. “Be good.”  
  
Dean smiles as angelically as everybody told him he was. “I’m always good.”  
  
“Yeah huh.” Mary clips her hair into a pony tail. “In your dreams maybe.”  
  
“Maybe,” Dean repeats.  
  
Then the door bell’s ringing, and Mom mutters something about John of course not getting it, probably too busy drinking, and she’s rushing Dean downstairs, shoving her feet into pumps as she navigates the stairs, and then she’s throwing the door open for someone in a teal sweater vest, notebooks stuffed under her arms, saying with a huge grin, “I’m Becky Rosen!”  
  
“I know,” Mom says.  
  
Everybody knew Becky Rosen. Becky Rosen was what the post-person called a magazine editor with exaggerated fingers that was supposedly about star trek but was, actually, an illicit magazine--or fanzine more like--publishing short stories ranging from boring tales about star fleet adventures to disturbing erotica complete with green blooded forplay—which didn’t make much sense to Dean, admittedly, but he never could figure why people laughed uncomfortably into their palms whenever they mentioned the name Becky Rosen.  
  
“Well, of course,” Becky says, eyes shifting side to side. “Can I come in?”  
  
Mom nods, and Becky waltzes in, collapses to the couch and spreads out her notebooks across the glass coffee table. “I’m supposed to be studying for calculus but you know—I just find that the muse strikes at the most inopportune times.” She bites her lips, looks up at Mom expectantly. “Right?”  
  
“Uh huh,” Mom says. “We’ll be back by midnight. Thanks so much for doing this—it means a lot.” She cradles her belly with her hand, smiles sad-like at Dean even though tonight was supposed to be good, was supposed to be happy.  
  
So Dean runs over, hugs her tight, and whispers, “Love you, Mom,” and she says back, “Love you too, baby angel” – and then Dad stamps his feet on the porch and hollers for mom to hurry up ‘cause he’s freezing his balls off and Mom sighs a little and disappears, closing the door with a soft click.  
  
“So what do you wanna do, big guy?”  
  
“Watch tv,” Dean says quick. “Cas doesn’t have a clue about Star Trek. Didn’t get my trouble with tribbles reference can you just imagine.”  
  
Becky narrows her eyes and her lips and her entire stance at him. “Oh nice apple of temptation, Dean. But it’s not going to work despite my well known devotion to Star Trek, especially the illicit sexual relationship of Kirk and Spock—surely you’ve picked up on it, too?”  
  
Dean blinks his eyes. “Um,” he says.  
  
“Well, nevermind, I guess you are a bit—“ she holds her palm around the height of her knees and coughs out the word, “Young.” Clears her throat. “Well, I’m sure that’s a crying shame that Cas—“ she cranes her neck around until Dean holds out Cas, small little toy-shaped Cas towards her—“Ah. Yes --but your mom said no tv and you know, it’s not like I can just ignore what your mom said.”  
  
“But she needn’t ever know,” Dean returns, brightly, switching on the smile that made Jo punch him in the arm because no way in heck was she going to be taken in by the likes of you, Dean Winchester!  
  
“I would know, though,” Becky says. “Now shush. This fanfiction isn’t going to write itself.”  
  
She takes out her legal pad and her red pen and begins to scribble fiercely, gnawing on her lip, sometimes picking at them with her fingers, while Dean spreads himself over the coffee table like a cat, stomach flush against the glass, unable to read Becky’s scribbles upside down.  
  
Dad would pitch a fit if he ever saw this. Dean doesn’t care. Not. One. Bit. He hopes he gets body smudges over this table and that Dad will feel compelled to wipe it down with Windex.  
  
“What’s fanfiction?” he finally asks Becky.  
  
“Wha?” Becky mutters, then blinks. “Um. It’s lots of things. It’s basically, you know, well it’s basically saying to the canon, now look here you, what if you were like this instead of—“ and she gestures widely up and down – “you.”  
  
“Canon?” Dean says blankly.  
  
“The source text?” Becky says, eyebrows all the way up, making her forehead all wrinkly. “Don’t they teach you anything in school?”  
  
“No,” Dean says, resting his cheeks in the hollow of his elbow. “I keep telling Cas that he might as well gobble the whole thing up but xe refuses to even consider it.”  
  
Becky stares at him, then shakes herself. “Look, kid. I need to write this fic pronto—“ she holds up her palm “—and no don’t ask me what the fu—heck it’s about because I won’t tell you.”  
  
“Dad doesn’t censor himself,” Dean says. “No black bars for Dad. You can say it.” He takes a deep breath, glances at Cas who’s busy pretending to lick xyr paw but Dean knows better—xe’s listening, listening hard. “Fuck. F U C K,” he says, spelling it, waiting for Becky to be shocked, to grip him by the ear, drag him to the bathroom and wash his mouth out with soap.  
  
“Congratulations,” Becky says. “You know a four letter word.” She claps, then leans in conspiratorially. “What others do you know?”  
  
“Shit,” Dean says proudly.  
  
“Where’d you learn all those big little words,” Becky says.  
  
“Dad mostly.” Dean looks down into his lap, into the spread open palms of his hands. “But I try not to say any because I don’t think Mom would like it.   ”  
  
“Yeah?” Becky says, head bent over her legal pad, pen scratching and scratching and scrawling its way across the face of it.  
  
“She thinks you’re too young or something?”  
  
Dean nods. “Yeah. But Cas knows better. Cas calls me the righteous man.” He puffs out his chest.  
  
“Sounds so grown up,” Becky says. “No really, though. Kirk-Spock-Uhura kisses aren’t going to write themselves.”  
  
“But I’m bored,” Dean says, cranking his head backwards so his jaw hung open, eyes glued to the ceiling. “You’re not a very fun babysitter.”  
  
Becky hands him some spare papers and says, “Here. Go draw something awesome and cool and great.”  
  
“I just draw stick figures,” Dean says, side-eying the paper.  
  
“Then you draw those stick figures proud,” Becky says.  
  
So he goes off to the corner, to sprawl beside the fire glowing in their bricked up fireplace, where he had left Cas all cosy beside the red bricks, and says, “I wanna draw you, Cas.”  
  
“Nothing’s stopping you,” Cas says.  
  
“But I don’t know how you look like.” Dean crawls up closer. “I know you’re not really a toy.”  
  
“I already told you—my true form can be overwhelming to humans. That’s why the angels must take vessels—else the eyes of those unfortunate to gaze upon would burn and consume them with the glory of the host of heaven.”  
  
“Oh,” Dean says. “So what are you?” He’s already sketching out an oval shaped tiger with fearsome jaws and sharper teeth. “Do you have wings like pterodactyls—“ he mimes flapping his arms in the air.  
  
“No. They’re not actually wings,” Cas says. “They are like me—transdimensional wavelengths of celestial inten when I am not vesseled in a physical form.”  
  
“Is that a fancy way of saying fire and flame?”  
  
“No, but I understand that this is perhaps the closest approximation to understanding you can come to—the breadth of the English language is not sufficiently broad to encompass all that I am.”  
  
“Well. How hoity-toity of you.” Dean heaves a heavy sigh because come on how the heck is he supposed to draw that. So he goes on with the toy and he scribbles orange and red and yellow around the shoulder area.  “I’m just gonna assume you have balrog wings, then.”  
  
“What’s that?” Cas says, breathing heavy over Dean’s shoulder.  
  
“Your wings.”  
  
“I don’t have wings in the traditional or colloquial sense of the word. I just told you.”  
  
“Artistic interpretation, Cas,” Dean says. “Let me have some fun. Besides, nobody can agree whether balrogs have wings anyway so you’re sharing some fine company.”  
  
“But that’s not who I am,” Cas says.  
  
“What do you want me to do?” Dean says. “You won’t show me. And I know you’re not a toy, I know that you’re not.”  
  
“I’m a toy with wings on your paper,” Cas says. “And I’m not that either.”  
  
Dean rips the paper up, clenches it into sweaty wads with his fists. “Fine. Gone. You see?”  
  
They stare at each other. The silence is uncomfortable and prickly and Dean kinda hates it.  
  
“Why can’t I see you,” Dean finally says. “Why won’t you even let me imagine.”  
  
“You can—but it will always be inaccurate.”  
  
“But what—what about the—the idea---of you?” Dean asks, tentative, throat thick around the words.  
  
“Alright,” Cas says, letting xyr head settle into the dip of xyr shoulders.  
  
So Dean closes his eyes, picks up the crayon. He can tell the yellow by the sharp point, worn so by the side-lined coloring of suns rising over horizons. There’s red --- point dulled by the bloodied gashes Dean had torn across the paper. Unused blue, not blunt but not sharp either.  
  
Dean clutches them in his fist, drags the tips across the paper with his eyes still closed, moving up and down, sometimes falling off into the carpet. Sometimes, a crayon drops and that’s okay—perhaps the chill on his hand is Cas, saying enough, now—maybe it’s just Dean’s imagination, who the heck knows really.  
  
But when he opens his eye, there’s only glimmers of white peeking through the colors, and there’s Cas right there up close to him, voice nuzzled close in his ear—“is this how you think of me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says finally. “I think so.” He reaches out his hand, caresses the bridge of Cas’s pink-pink nose. “I still think you’d look cool with pterodactyl wings.”  
  
“I could have those,” Cas says.  
  
Dean tucks himself between Cas’s forepaws. “I want pterodactyl wings.”  
  
“Why? You’re a human. You don’t need them.”  
  
Dean turns even though he gets a mouthful of fur. “Because I want to be like you, Cas. I want to look over my brother like you look after me. I want to be the righteous man like you want me to be. And can the righteous man even be human, Cas, is that a thing a real righteous man can be? Because I remember my sermons even though my mom’s stopped dragging me to church—I remember what the preacher said about there being no one without sin, no not one.” Dean stretches, lithe like a cat. “In fact, I used to pretend to be a pterodactyl or a balrog all the time, and maybe it’s not really that different from pretending to be an angel or a righteous man. Here, let me show you.”  
  
And Dean scrambles to his feet, clutching his stuffed toy tiger after him, feet bounding up the stairs. He tears the blankets off his bed. Ties the blue scratchy one around his neck, fists gripping the ribbon bound corners, arms pumping up and down, sending gusts of warm air into Cas’s face. “Cool, huh?” he asks.  
  
“Perhaps,” Cas says. “What are you going to do?”  
  
“You’ll see.” And Dean drops a wink as he tromps down the stairs, blanket trailing behind him, and slips into the garage while Becky mutters something in the living room.  
  
Dean lets himself into the garage, jumps and slams his palm against the button that’ll open the door with a creak and groan. Dean goes to Dad’s ladder propped up against the wall, drags it out because Cas is too much of a goody-two shoes to actually help him mount it against the house so that he could climb to the roof.  
  
But still, Cas is a good friend.  
  
Dean knows this because Cas is there, right there beside him, toes nestled against the drain, clogged with leaves and dirt and the skeletons of dead butterflies. Paw to red sneaker and jaw to jaw, Dean spread his arms. “You ready, Cas?”  
  
Cas nods.  
  
“You’ll catch me if I don’t fly?” Dean says.  
  
“I’m everywhere,” Cas says. “Even the ground.”  
  
“Good,” Dean says. And he stands up on his tip-toes, like the ballerinas he’d seen on tv, and he arches his back, head tipped up towards the sky, eyes closed, ready to jump, ready to soar, ready for anything, knowing that Cas would catch him, rough scrape of paws against skin, claws just pricking the skin--  
  
And then Becky’s screaming as she scrambles up the ladder quicker than anybody Dean had ever seen, and she’s got him by the ear, she’s squeezing so flipping hard, and she’s dragging him down the ladder, crying what were you thinking what the fuck were you thinking, huh, I could get fired for this you could be dead for this  
  
And she mustn’t hear him protest that Cas wouldn’t ever let anything bad to happen and he just—he just—  
  
“You just want what?” Becky says, face to close to his, making him recoil a little. Personal space, jeeze.  
  
“To be an angel,” Dean says. “To be the righteous man that Cas says I am.” He leans up close into Becky’s ear. “I don’t want to disappoint xem.”  
  
“I’m sure Cas will understand,” Becky says, voice shrill. “Oh my god, you just cannot do that. And if Cas—“ she looks around—“Cas would know that. And not expect so much of you. More than you could ever give.”  
  
Dean jerks away. “It wasn’t Cas’s idea. It was mine.” He stands up tall, folds his arms over his chest like his Dad. “I can think for myself. And I want to be like Cas. Because xe’s good. And awesome.”  He smiles at xem even though Cas is already sighing, Dean--  
  
Becky rubs her forehead with her fist, then lowers her hand so that she’s rubbing circles against her chest, over where her heart must be. “Fine. Tash take me if I’m going to tell you who you can or cannot be. I mean, that’s like the first rule in all the Really Good Books – well, Western books because—“  
  
And okay, so maybe Dean starts tuning her out because he has no idea what she’s going on about, but eventually she shoos him out of the room, telling him to go play on surfaces even with the ground, no rooftops for you dino boy and so Dean retreats, grumpily, up to his room, calling down, “Is the second story okay, Becky! It isn’t ground level” and Becky says don’t get smart with me and then Dean sees his mom’s room, door cracked open, and he sidles in, goes into her bathroom, and opens each door until he finds her makeup drawer.  
  
Mom’s got her eyeshadow sorted by the colors of the rainbow. She’s got her lipsticks in another, pinks and reds and blacks and bruised up purples lined up in a row. Dean finds an orange one—the brush it comes with is so small, but he’s a small boy, so maybe it doesn’t matter.  
  
He drags the brush like he’s scraping up pond scum until there’s a wedge of powdery makeup clinging to the pad of the brush. He drags a thick stripe across the fragile bone of wrist, but doesn’t close the loops because tiger strips aren’t perfect and looped up nice.  
  
Cas watches from the mirror, and Dean holds his arm up. “What do you think?”  
  
“I think there are better role models,” Cas says at last.  
  
“You want me to be the righteous man,” Dean says, marking another stripe of orange across his arm. “And who better than an angel. Aren’t they righteous too?”  
  
Cas stares down at xyr paws. “Some of us have fallen,” Cas says. “You know that.”  
  
Dean’s found his mom’s black eye shadow and is smearing it across his arms, his cheeks, his fingers. “But not you. Righteous in your purpose of celestial intent as you are so fond of saying.”  
  
“Dean—“ and Dean sees, in the mirror, the way Cas’s head’s dipped to xyr very paws, not a single flash of blue.  
  
“What?” Dean says, turning, a red tube of lipstick clutched in his hands.  
  
“Nothing,” Cas says. “It is not of import.”  
  
“What’s wrong, Cas?” Dean says.  
  
“Many things—but none which need concern you now.”  
  
Dean pops off the lid, unscrews it so the pomegranate red wedge rises slowly until it’s a tower of David, strong and red and smelling faintly of something weird. Dean licks his lip. “Apocalytpic big wrong things?”  
  
Cas smiles faintly, jut of a fang poking xyr lip. “One could say.”  
  
Dean turns back to the mirror, smears the redness across his lips. “So no need to worry about it till I’m all grown up then.”  
  
Cas nods. “You’ve got red on your chin.”  
  
Dean tosses the crumpled lipstick into the sink. Turns, hands raised, fingers curled into claws, gnashes his teeth. “Well, yeah. Tigers aren’t well known for their clean eating.” He snaps his teeth at Cas, roars. “And I’ve read my bible, Cas. I know what the angels have done in their righteous fury.”  
  
“And you still think it was right?” Cas says.  
  
“Well, like Mom said once. It’s hard being right.”  Dean stretches in the sunlight, shirt riding up his tummy. “Let’s go play, Cas. I’m tired of being cramped up in here. Besides, we aren’t tame tigers, are we?” He slings his arm around Cas’s neck as they stagger down the stairs, loud enough for Becky to say, “Flying off bannisters is also not allowed Dean Winchester!”  
  
And then she’s coming, coming, papers clutched to her chest and yellow paste it notes flapping from the back of her hands. She takes him in, his black and orange eyes, his stripes, his red, red mouth. “Oh,” she says.  Then she gives him a thumbs up. “You look awesome.”  
  
Dean feels a little something warm settle in his belly, and he winks at Cas. “Gonna play outside—if that’s okay?”  
  
“Yeah. Just don’t go out of the yard. Don’t cross the street. Don’t even step out of the curb. And when it’s dark—like eight p.m. dark, you gotta come inside.”  
  
“’K,” Dean calls, letting the door slam shut behind him.  
  
“What shall we play?” Cas says.  
  
Dean shoves into xyr shoulder. “What they don’t have games in heaven?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well, dang! Basketball is boring. Baseball is boring.” Dean goes to the shed, rummaging around until he finds a soccer ball which he bounced up and down with his knee. “Soccer boring’s too. But you know. We don’t have to play any of those games. We can play our own.”  
  
“What about the rules?”  
  
Dean shrugs, grinning. “We’ll make ‘em up as we go.”  He throws the ball up into the air, kicks it with his foot as it comes down, sending it flying across the yard. He shoves Cas and says, “First one to the ball!”  
  
He runs, limbs pumping, muscles flexing and contracting, pulling his joints and his tendons tight, propelling him across the field as his heart starts to thump, more, more, more and he hurries, hurries so fast toward that ball as he feels the heat of Cas’s breath hot under his collar, the smell of something heavy like meat or maybe blood, like Cas had been biting xyr lips like Dean had seen xem do on occasion ever since the night with the tuna—  
  
Then flash of orange, streak of black, and Cas is ahead of him, pouncing and rolling towards the ball, and Dean lunges, grips onto the scruff of his neck, and they plough into the ground, roll in the dirt and the grass until green stains scuff up his careful stripes. They claw for the ball, and Dean gets it first, clutches it to his stomach and rolls while Cas bats at his belly, shirt ruffed up to his arm pits, and Dean pretends to kick the ball, and Cas follows with xyr eyes, giving Dean enough wiggling room to squirm away, and he does, ball raised up over his arms, shouting in triumph, “Ha, ha, made you look—“  
  
And suddenly there’s six hundred pounds of cat weightless with grace rushing after him, tongue lolling between jaws, fangs dripping with spit, and Dean speeds up faster, faster, until he trips his way to the porch shouting, “Goal, goal, goal!”  
  
“There are no goals,” Cas says, a growl guttering up his voice. “They would have been determined at the beginning of the game.”  
  
“Cas,” Dean says, “we’re making it up—that’s part of the game. Just like now that I’ve scored a goal, you have to hide your eyes behind your paws—and none of that omni-scient, omni-present crud, okay—and give me a head start.” Dean kneads his side, tries to stitch up the ache that’s punching a bruise in his kidney.  
  
Dean was expecting Cas to protest, but instead, xyr ears just flatten a little towards xyr skull. Xe licks xyr paw, and says, “Run.”  
  
And Dean doesn’t think twice as he takes off down the block (quite forgetting Becky’s warning), and dives under brush, stomping in the fetid rainwater that’s collected in puddles on the street because everybody knew that water washed off people’s scents and he wonders how fast Cas would count, if he’d go onetwothreefourfive like some kids on the block, or if he’d go slow, second by second, and the blood runs cold because either way means bad news for Dean because if it were fast, he’d have less time, but if it were even, then Cas would be confident and sure, pure in xyr purpose to find xem, and suddenly, despite the sweat running down his neck, despite the humidity clinging to his skin like a second t-shirt, he shivers with goose bumps dimpling his spine.  
  
He clutches the ball under the crook of his elbow, considers tossing it aside, nice smelly red herring to lead Cas away, but would it really be a game without a ball? Wasn’t that the whole point of it? For Cas to get—to take—to find—the ball from Dean?  
  
He bites his lip, and tastes the red on his tongue, the way it makes his cheeks pucker up, the way it dries up his throat and makes it huge, makes it hard to swallow, and he rubs a wrist across his mouth, streak of red against the bone, and crawls on his hands and knees along some neighbor’s fence line (staying far away from the Finnerman tree because Dean just cannot face the tree again, sure that when the wind blows, the branches replay the screams of that horrible night, and he can’t help but wonder if he hears the singing siren wail of a honed axe blade in the wind, but no no no, no one would dare touch the Raphael Tree again would they) – so Dean turns back, scrapes up his knees good and raw as he slides towards the woods, wondering if he’d be able to find his way back in the dark, or if he looked hard enough, he’d be able to see the blue of Cas’s eyes and they would lead him back home—  
  
The ground shudders under Dean’s hands and knees and is this going to be his first earthquake, is this really going to happen now—but he looks up, blowing his dank hair from his eyes, and sees that no—it’s not.  
  
It’s just Cas – haha, just Cas—and is that Dean, is he really laughing so shrill and frightened at the sight of Cas towering above him, bigger than houses, taller than the power lines, and Dean wonders if he’s going to see xyr mouths, xyr eyes, xyr wings that defy physics and reality and still exist—  
  
Dean can’t look away despite the pricking of his thumbs and the burning in his eyes, and he only just barely whispers, “You forgot to say, ready or not!”  
  
“It’s a new rule,” Cas just says, voice rumbling through the ground, making his ribs quake and shiver in his skin.  
  
And Cas’s eyes are more than blue-glass, more blue than the sky’s that storming above his head, more blue than that time a neighbor had decked out their house with so many Christmas lights that they blew out the circuit and, for a brief instance, there was a flash of electricity, so fucking blue (and Dean doesn’t feel remotely bad for using that word, no sir) and it had burned into his eyes and made them blot and bleed –  
  
Those were how blue Cas’s eyes were, and Dean could not look away even though salt water streams down his face trying to douse the searing pain, wash away the shadow of wings and a multi-fanged roar.  
  
Dean runs, sneakers scrabbling in the mud, clutching for purchase in the slick grass. His sweat runs his makeup, but he doesn’t care. A branch smacks him right in the kisser and he doesn’t complain, even though there’s blood in his mouth.  
  
There’s a pain in his side that he thinks’ll break him in two but Cas is there, right there behind, can’t stop, can’t let the angel win—  
  
And the ball is slippery in his hands, and slips from his palms—  
  
He skids to a stop—can’t let Cas have the ball—but xe’s already pounced, claws outstretched, mouth snarling—  
  
There’s a tiny sigh followed by the clap of collapsing leather walls –  
  
And the ball just hangs in tatters from Cas’s paws.  
  
“Do we really need a ball for this game?” Cas asks, and xyr eyes won’t leave Dean’s, pinning him just as if they were paws and claws and any other sharp thing.  
  
“No,” Dean says, heaving in oxygen to relieve the burning urgency in his lungs.  
  
Cas licks xyr lips, pink kitten slip of xyr tongue almost dainty after the way xe had shred the ball. “Then run.”  
  
Dean doesn’t need to be told twice. Weave in and out of trees, hurtle over fences, run in strangers’ backyards, hope they won’t call the cops or his mom or whoever—  
  
Cas behind him, never losing stride—  
  
But once, when Dean spares a moment to look behind his shoulder, trusting his feet to run true down the middle of the street—  
  
He sees nothing but a ribbon of black pavement stretching behind him, bare glimmer of the lane reflectors shining the stars into his eyes—  
  
And it’s not until he hears the soft drumming beside him, of another gait beside his own pounding, desperate run, that he turns and sees Castiel beside him, crowding him to the side of the street, pushing him back into his own yard, curling xyr body so that it’s impossible for Dean to swerve away, his tail pushing Dean forward when he tries to stop and run back in the opposite direction—  
  
and Dean’s heart is rabbiting against his chest, scudding up against his rib bones, slingshotting its way into his throat, and he can’t breathe as he stumbles and falls to his knees in his yard, Cas bearing down upon him—  
  
and he lands on his back, the weight and mass and velocity of it forcing the breath from his lungs in a whuffling spit-take as he flings his arms over his face, the weight of Cas heavy on his chest, the threat of his claws edging through the thin material of his t-shirt, breath wet against his face something wet spatters his cheeks.  
  
Dean lowers his arms so that their resting above his head, getting scratched and itched in the grass, palms up towards the sky. And he juts his chin up, meets the blue-eyed stare above him, the dripping jowls looming over his face, not even squirming when Cas says, “You’re it.”  
  
“Okay.” Dean wonders how he can pull the noise up from somewhere in his gut, how his lips, bloodied up like they are from the branch and the wild slides through the ground and being chased by a gosh darn angel of the lord still has the strength and will to shape that noise into something vaguely resembling a word.  
  
“Is that how this game goes?”  
  
Dean tries to shrug with the weight of an angel on him, pressing him deeper against grass and mud and the foundations of the earth. “If you want.”  
  
Cas’s head lowers, lowers until the feather light edges of xyr fur tickles Dean’s face, xyr cheeks, xyr lips. Dean juts his head up higher, sees that he’s almost head-butted Cas, and that there’s a streak of blood from where his injured nose and lips grazed the pink, shiny nose.  
  
Suddenly, startlingly, Cas’s tongues rolls from xyr jaws, laps upwards towards xyr nose, and licks away that bright smear of blood, and Dean bites his lips, says, “Oh, I see. You can clean yourself up, but can’t spare a thought towards little old me.”  
  
Cas tils xyr head, till it nearly rests on the roll of xyr shoulders. “Very well.”  
  
Dean slits xyr eyes when Cas dips closer, almost giggling at the first shock of Cas’s rough tongue, rough like sandpaper, rough like the grating sound of xyr voice, against his cheek, licking up the blood like it wasn’t anything—  
  
“You said you wanted to be me, to be a tiger,” Cas says, voice in Dean’s ear now.  
  
Dean shivers, nods.  
  
“Maybe you should do the rest yourself.”  
  
“Okay—“ And Dean, hesitantly, licks the tender swell of his lips, tastes the blood, tangy and metallic, mixed with the taste of the lipstick, and he licks up to the corners, stretches so that he licks the skin around his mouth, until he just tastes the pucker-up of the lipstick instead of the blood. When he looks up at Cas, he sees that xe has missed a spot on xyr own nose, so he braces himself up against the ground with his fists, reaches out with his face and his neck until he licks at that wet, wet nose with his tongue, tasting dirt and blood and something else that he wonders is angel grace. Cas holds very still, so Dean reaches up, buries his hand in Cas’s fur. “Good?”  
  
“We’ll make a tiger of you yet,” Castiel says, stepping off from Dean’s chest, and when Dean sits up, it’s like Cas is smaller, like xe’s sewn xemself up a little tighter in the fake velveteen smoothness of xyr stuffed hide.  
  
“Time to go inside?”  
  
Cas doesn’t say anything, but leads the way back, tail hanging a little low, almost dragging on the ground. Dean tries to slip past Becky, but a traitorous stair creaks, and she’s suddenly there saying, “I was just about to get worried—“ pausing when she sees the state of his face and she’s kneeling in front of him, asking if he wants ice, (he doesn’t), noticing the state of his clothes, of the mud caked to his skin, and she says, “Bath time,” she says, pointing up the stairs. “Scrub it hard till you’re shiny and red because oh my gosh your mom is going to kill me.”  
  
And Dean can’t even escape to the safety of his bedroom because Becky insists on following him up the stairs and making sure he goes into the bathroom and that he closes the door, so he just turns to Cas who’s sitting still as can be on the toilet, and says, “I’ll pay you a quarter if you take my bath for me.”  
  
“Why would I need to take a bath?” Cas says serenely because that jerk’s gone and cleaned off all the mud and left Dean in his muddy clothes and grass-stained knees, with nothing but soap and a washcloth and a baby-sitter at the door, shouting that she doesn’t hear any water running, mister.  
  
“You suck, Cas,” Dean says, flipping the hot water on, stripping out of his dirty clothes and throwing them at Cas. He crawls into the bath, wriggles his toes in the soapy, sudsy waters. “What about for two quarters?”

 

In retrospect, Dean thinks, perhaps, that it’s a wonder that they all survived. He’d call it a miracle, but he knows better now, and it’s worse when Cas doesn’t even bite warningly into his wrist, doesn’t say softly, you should show me—god—some respect.  
  
But it happened slow, too slow to see, slow like floating in sunny syrup crystalizing into sugar, mosquitoes trapped in moments of amber.  
  
Going over to Jo’s house, being told by Ellen that no, Jo can’t play right now because she’s been caught stealing the chocolate cake, smushing bite-sized pieces into the mouth of her bunny, Mr. Buns, saying, “See, doesn’t it taste so good, doesn’t it taste like heaven—“  
  
And Dean’s stomach flips at Jo’s gall to ask an angel to compare chocolate cake to something like heaven, and he asks her later, “What the heck were you thinking, Jo?”  
  
Jo’s just the same as ever, wrapping the bunny in her arms, and putting her face in the space between Anna’s ears. “I think that we thought it was good. Isn’t that right?”  
  
And Anna says yes, and even though Cas’s body doesn’t have eyebrows anymore, Dean can sense the frown emanating from that velvet body, like every seam and every bit of cotton is twisting in on itself in disapproval.  
  
“Cas likes tuna,” Dean says, and Dean rubs Cas’s head, cupping xyr head in the palm of xyr hand, the jut of a fang pressuring the flesh, the rough pink of Cas’s tongue tracing the prints therein even though Cas tries to protest, and Jo and Anna say nothing, and Dean just says, “Come on, Cas. Don’t take it so hard. It’s just the way, you know—you like tuna, I like—“ and he stretches out his hands, curving talons glued to the beds. “Rawr,” he says, slashing the air at Jo’s face, then Cas’s, until they’re nuzzled up against each other, until they collapse into the floor, cradled against Cas’s belly, xyr paws framing their heads, one claw in the flesh of Dean’s lips, and maybe, maybe there is a taste of blood, but Dean doesn’t care, doesn’t care one whit, and he certainly doesn’t care if Anna and Jo have fallen silent.  
  
It’s not until one night that things start to get bad, living under the stairs bad, when Ellen calls up Mom, pleading for Dean to come over, to please come over and to talk some sense into Jo.  
  
And Dean says okay, and Mom comes with him, and they’re walking hand in hand, the orange and black stripes on Dean’s face glaring in the light, until they hear the chop-chop chopping rhythm of metal biting into wood and spitting it back, and they see Jael Finnerman, in her little white dress with the blue sash, whaling at the trunk with her Daddy’s axe, her hair tied up into braids, her arms swinging into arcs graceful as a dancer’s, as she bites into the tree—crying out in frustration when the wound heals as if it had never been, as if sap hadn’t leaked out of it like blood—until she collapses at the root of the tree, exhausted, her cheeks shining with tears, and Dean wonders why Castiel refuses to look, why Castiel stops speaking and breathing, withdrawing so close and small it’s almost as if Dean is just clutching some toy to his chest.  
  
Mary sees, she frowns, and she presses up against Dean, pushing him forward, and Dean wants to ask if she saw the way the tree healed, the way the angel-tree was untouchable, but he can’t, and the wind sometimes steals the sounds of Jael’s tears and sometimes make the leaves laugh in the tree, and Dean refuses to think that it’s actually Raphael laughing, laughing at them all—  
  
When they answer the door, Ellen’s face is wan and pale and pinched and she says, “Why did he bring the tiger—“ at Mary, like Dean wasn’t there, and wow, what a cold brushed off feeling Dean didn’t appreciate one bit.  
  
Mary doesn’t say much, just twists her lips up and pushes Dean into the door, and Ellen tells him that Jo’s in her room, and when he goes in, she’s curled in on herself, fetal position is what he thinks Mom would say, and Anna’s there, Mr. Bun’s ears all floppy, eyes unblinking, cooing softly, making comforting vowel sounds.  
  
“Jo—“ Dean says, and he looks at Castiel who has eyes only for Anna, and then xe’s gone, by Anna’s side, nose to nose and eye to eye and they’re speaking together, Dean just knows, doesn’t know how and wow rude much, speaking telepathatically to each other jesus what the heck.  He reaches out to touch Jo’s shoulder, and she curls into a tighter ball, mouth pressed into the fleshy curve of her elbow.  
  
“I’ve read the books,” she says, voice muffled, words blunted and chopped off short. “I believe, Dean, I believe with all my heart—“ and her hair’s fallen into tangled curls to her shoulder. “I believe—I believe—“  
  
And she scrambles to her feet, she falls to her knees in front of Anna, fists beating the carpet. “Why aren’t you real, why aren’t you real? I wish you real—you’re supposed to be real—I believe you—I believe in you, oh my god, I believe in you.”  
  
Anna says nothing, and Castiel says that they should go, and Jo cries and she says, “You’re not just a toy to me—you’re—you’re realer--realer than mom or even dad, Anna, Anael, please be real—“  
  
There’s a lump growing in Dean’s throat, scratching up the insides so bad there are tears starting to seep from his eyes.  
  
“Dean—“ Cas says, but then—finally, Anna speaks.  
  
“I am real, Jo.”  
  
Jo bites her lips, shakes her head, and Dean recognizes it from when kids are about to have fits in school, screaming no no no no because he’s done it before and yeah so has Jo—maybe the real question is who hasn’t scream no until they were so hoarse they could only collapse on their bed, too tired to kick off their shoes, brush their teeth, huddle under a cave of covers.  
  
“I am,” Anna insists, and for the first time, Dean hears her voice shake, and he wonders if Jo has heard her voice shake too, and he looks down at Cas, almost expecting to see the bloody mouth from where the tuna cans had torn xyr lips to ribbons, but Cas stares, silent and cold, a soldier standing watch, so far away even though in Dean’s arms, and he shivers like there’s a chill, like it’s crept into his heart and now icicles hang from the cage of his ribs.  
  
“No, you’re not! You don’t even have a mouth.” Jo wipes her hand, lips leaving a smear of spit across her wrist. “You couldn’t even taste the cake properly because your tongue is made of velvet! You can’t even hop around like a bunny!” And she whirls around, nose right up against Anna’s, and she says, “The Easter Bunny could hop better than you!”  
  
“That doesn’t mean I’m not real,” Anna tries to say again, her voice shaking more. “Just because I’m a wave of celestial intent doesn’t mean I’m not real.”  
  
“I can’t even hug you properly—“  
  
“You can, you can,” Anna says, lifting her arms, her ragged arms, a thread slowly unwinding from a worn seem. “Hug me, hug me.”  
  
Jo makes no move to scoop Anna up in her arms like she had always done. “I’ve seen you—I’ve seen you in my dreams--I’ve seen the fire and I know that if I were to really touch you, to look upon you—I know, I know that I wouldn’t survive.” She shuffles closer on her knees. “This isn’t you—not really you. I shouldn’t be able to be here, my hair should be scorched from my scalp, I’d be bald and smoking and when or if you were in my arms, I’d bleed and bleed—“  
  
And Dean jerks when the pressure in his hand sharpens into wet pain, and there’s blood on his wrist, welling from the marks Cas had left upon him with xyr great claws, and Cas looks and when Dean does not move away, licks the blood up, smearing red into the pink of xyr tongue.  
  
“I have many forms,” Anna says, voice weak. “Not one is more real than the other.”  
  
Jo hiccoughs. “Really?”  
  
“Really really,” Anna says, arms still lifted, inviting Jo to come to her, to hug her. “This is me, and I’m really there, I’m really hugging you. You don’t need to see me in the burning bush, you don’t need to see any of that—“  
  
“What if I want to,” Jo says, eyes a bit dryer, peering between her fingers.  
  
Anna just huffs a smile. “What if we don’t always get what we want? Come here, be with me—because I’m really here, and I really love you.”  
  
And Jo’s tears are dried and she clutches Anna to her chest, breath a dry desert wind sighing through the dried up bones of her chest like she’d empty herself, like there were no tears left to shed.  
  
They don’t bother finding chairs or turning on the telly or even the music. They just sprawl out on Jo’s floor, their angels on their chests, over the beating of their heart, their bodies spread out and their legs tangled up in the other, listening to each other breathe—wondering if they listen hard enough they can feel the thrum of celestiality, the buzzing ache of their real voice, but no—  
  
The angels are just as silent as their charges, except that Cas nibbles the tender flesh of Dean’s wrist, hard enough not to tickle, and Dean closes his eyes, wondering how long it would take for Cas to forget xemself, to accidentally break the flesh and cause him to bleed into Cas’s mouth.  
  
Dean knew Cas didn’t do this to just anyone. That Cas didn’t need to do this because xe was an angel, that xe could quit whenever xe wanted.  
  
And Dean never wanted Cas to stop, to stop looking at him like something big hung up on Dean being the righteous man, like he was the center of something important, that he was significant beyond being a speck of dust, and, when Cas was silent, like xe was sleeping except xe was an angel so it wasn’t really sleeping, just a deep intense sort of quiet (“shhh, I’m listening,” Cas had said once), Dean swore that he wouldn’t disappoint xem—not loud enough for Cas to hear, he hoped.  
  
Soft filtered yellow sun turned to grey dusk turned to night and still they sprawled on the floor until Dean’s bladder began to ache, until the carpet made the shallow of his back where his shirt had rode up his spine itch like it was really grass he had been allergic to, but Dean couldn’t bear to get up, couldn’t bear to get up from under Cas who seemed so much bigger now, covering his entire body with xem’s, breath heavy and hot, jaws so big that Dean knew he could fit his head in and crawl inside and Cas could swallow him whole if xe wanted, and his stomach felt funny at the thought, but he couldn’t stop, not with Cas nibbling and lapping at his wrist until it was raw, raw, raw until he shifts uncomfortably and Cas moves to his face, licking along the edges of the makeup, careful not to take it off, just close enough, Dean imagines, to taste.  
  
It wasn’t until Mary climbed the stairs, Ellen beside her, arms folded, that Cas was toy-sized again, and Dean was yawning, begging for apple pie because it had been so long, and besides, Cas would want to try some too and xe hadn’t had any at all.  
  
“Why would xe want apple pie?” Mom asks, her voice hard, her pace fast as she almost dragged Dean home after her.  
  
“Because it tastes like home,” Dean says.  
  
Both Cas and Mary stiffen beside him, lips buttoning up and not another word escaping.

 

Dean’s hardly prepared when the principle calls him into the office because he hasn’t done anything, not a single thing, not even lobbed spit balls behind Ms. Collins back. But he swallows hard, pushes his way through the door, clutching Cas in his tiny fist. He sees that his Dad is there, and that Dad is taking him away, telling him that it’s time, that it’s fucking time, that the baby’s fucking coming, and Mary’d never forgive them if they weren’t there for the birth, shit.  
  
Dad’s got Mom’s car and it’s so weird to see him in the seat, all pushed up against the steering wheel because he won’t move the seat back, won’t touch a thing in Mom’s car, not even switching the channel from Mom’s rock station, even though it’s Bon Jovi and wow, Dad really hates Bon Jovi.  
  
They won’t let Dean into the birthing room and maybe that’s okay with Dean because Mary’s making these strangled sounds like she wants to scream but she won’t be caught dead doing it, and he clasps Cas close to his chest, and he asks, “Is she gonna be okay?”  
  
And maybe, maybe Dean just wants to shake Cas when Cas says, “Sam will be fine, Dean,” because yeah, maybe Dean’s pleased that his sibling’s gonna make it okay and isn’t crying out in pain, but what about Mom.  
  
“This isn’t going to be something like and Mary gave birth to Sam who did whatever,” Dean says. “She’s not just gonna be some name in a celestial family tree?”  
  
“Dean—“  
  
“Castiel,” Dean says because two can play that game.  
  
“It’s not the same,” Cas says.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“We all have our purposes—“  
  
“Don’t you go all Jedi master or Sith lord on me,” Dean says. “I’m Han Solo—I don’t believe in that destiny crap.”  
  
Cas just smiles, curves of xyr fang jutting over the pink of xyr lip. “There is an author to this story, Dean.”  
  
“Let me guess. You want me to show him some respect—right?”  
  
Cas dips xyr head. Of course, of course that’s what Cas wanted. That’s all Cas ever wanted. “I want more than that,” Dean says. “I don’t like this story. I don’t like this part where my mom is in pain and nobody’s gonna do anything and it sounds like she’s dying and maybe she won’t die but maybe she will die and Cas, Cas! Why would God let something like that happen?”  
  
Cas’s got nothing to say, which seems to be happening a lot lately.  
  
Then there’s a higher pitched squall, and Cas says, “It’s Sam—“  
  
“Is --- is Sam okay?” Dean says.  
  
Cas nods. “Humans always cry out. Sometimes, I think it’s their only prayer.”  
  
“Hey,” Dean says, pushing against Cas’s striped belly.  
  
They go home hours later, Mom wan and a little drooping, little Sammy in her arms, Dean trying to peer into his brother’s face on tip-toes, and Mom telling him, “Later, later—I’m tired Dean, you gotta give us a little space, Dean” – and Dean tries, and maybe sometimes Cas has to hold him back by picking him up by his neck in xyr jaws, growling softly, shaking him softly, only dropping when Dean begs him to do it again, please, to just do it again so that he can feel the way Cas’s voice made every bit of him hum and shudder in the wet embrace of xyr mouth.  
  
Dean can’t stop looking at the way Cas looks steadily out the window, licking xyr chops.  
  
A week or two after Sam’s birth, Mom finally agrees to some kind of baby shower, even though Ellen complains that goddamnit, you’re supposed to have one before the baby’s born not after, and Mom, head in her hand, Sam in her lap, says, “God Ellen, give it a rest,” and Ellen does, arranges the party invitations and says that she’ll take care of everything, don’t you worry about a thing, Mary—  
  
She stands so close to Mom that she rests her head against her, and  Dean wonders if she’s listening to the way Ellen’s stomach gurgles.  
  
Cas had told him that his own stomach was noisy—explained the whole business of digestion until Dean cut xem of and said that he just didn’t care  -- but nevertheless that didn’t stop him from listening to Cas, and hearing only the hollow silence of a scrap of cloth enfolding silent stuffing.  
  
“Why are you so quiet?”  
  
“I’ve no stomach, Dean,” Cas had said, like xyr patience was wearing thin (but come on, when doesn’t xe sound like that)—  
  
“But don’t you ever get hungry?” Just as Dean’s stomach growled alarmingly because wow, it had been since he’d eaten.  
  
Now, watching them, Dean thinks that they’re hungry, that they’re both hungry, even as Ellen reaches up to touch Mary’s hair, palms soothing over her scalp.  
  
Dean licks his lips, looks down at Cas, and goes outside to kick the ball around, to give Cas a chance to chase him, until they collapse into each other, breathing and huffing into each other’s mouths.

 

The baby party goes off without a hitch, but Mary watches in stony silence when they give so many stuffed animals—lions and tigers and bears oh my (but, Dean hastens to reassure Cas, you’re the only real tiger here, and Cas just says, I’m not actually a tiger, Dean, gosh can’t you take a joke, Dean says back, and apparently Cas can’t because xe just goes into huffy silence)—and when all the guests leave, grounding cake crumbs into the carpet and forgetting to throw away their gross mouth-wiped napkins stained with frosting and spit away, the very first things that Mary throws out are the stuffed animals and Dean’s stomach hollows out, breath flatlining into something caught in his throat, desperate for words, until he manages to scrape out a dull, “Mom, mom, what are you doing?”  
  
“We don’t need any of these,” Mom says, putting one after another into a black plastic bag. “We don’t need them, empty, empty things seeking to be filled—“ and she looks at Cas as she says it.  
  
“But how else are angels supposed to watch over him?” Dean says. He couldn’t do it by himself—he was just Dean, and if he had Cas, surely Sam was supposed to have someone too?  
  
Wasn’t he?  
  
“Mom, mom!” he shrieks, going after the toys all tied up in the plastic bag.  
  
But Mom grips him by the shoulder, pulls him back—not hard enough to hurt, but gosh, she’s so strong, even after the baby, after everything and he wants—he struggles against her—he wants to bite her like he and Cas did when they were fighting for the ball, when Cas made up a rule to justify breaking the one Dean had just made up not two seconds before—but he remembers, tries to remember that wow, Mom wasn’t Cas, and she wouldn’t understand—  
  
“Dean—Dean stop it—“  
  
They rip out of each other’s grasp, and Dean rubs his shoulder. “I don’t get it,” he says. “You said, that’s what you said. And now—“ he lifts his arms, let them drop in defeat.  
  
Mary’s throat works up and down. “We don’t need angels. We have too many in this house,” Mom hisses. “I wanted a family. I wanted to be safe. And now—“ she grabs Dean’s arm, fingers gentle like they always were, but she’s pushing his shirt up until he sees his wrist, sees the shape of Cas’s jaws tattooed there. “This isn’t safe,” she says. “This isn’t what I wanted.”  
  
“Mom--?” Dean says.  
  
But she puts her finger to his lips. “Go to your room. Go do your homework. Just. Leave me alone for a bit—okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Dean says. “I’m going. I’m going.”  
  
It’s not until Dean’s sitting at his desk, legs dangling from the edge of his chair that he turns to Castiel and he says, “Is my brother gonna be a righteous man, too?”  
  
Castiel looks out the window, tip of xyr tongue pushing against xyr teeth. “Perhaps.”  
  
Dean smiles, copies out one of his equations, scrubs out an answer. Colors in a nail bed with the charcoal. “Which angel will be you? Or Anna? Who will watch over him?”  
  
Cas licks a paw. “A sibling of mine. The name is of no import.”  
  
Dean thinks that’s kind of weird but can’t think more beyond the yellow hazy glow that’s settled in his stomach. “Your sibling watching over mine.” He slides from the chair, belly up on the floor. “That makes for a good story, doesn’t it?”  
  
“Yes, Dean. I’m sure it does.”

 

Life’s difficult at first, with the baby. Ellen strongly suggests that Mom take time off from the Roadhouse and Mom, just as reluctantly, agrees. At night, Dean hears Mom  and Dad fighting, hurling figures and numbers, Mary complaining about his goddamn beer and the way he disappears for days on end, and, over them all, is the squalling sound of baby Sammy crying from his cradle, crying for Mommy, for Daddy, for Dean—  
  
And Dean tries to tell Mom, tries to tell her so very hard, that it would be so much better if there was someone always there for him, a stuffed animal he could hold, and Mom would tighten up her list, swallowing down words, chopping a vegetable even more viciously until Mary turns around, and she says, “We don’t need angels, Dean!”  
  
“You said they were watching over us—“  
  
“From heaven, Dean, from heaven!” and her glance would sidle to Cas, the look sharp and hard as her knife, and Dean wonders whatever Cas had done to her, and he holds xem protectively in his arms until Mom apologizes and she sits beside him when she tucks him in, singing Hey Jude until he falls asleep.  
  
When Mom’s gone at work, Dean stuff his old socks with cotton balls, drawing on smiley faces or fanged faces or many faces and he’ll station them around Sam’s tiny little body, watching over him, standing guard like sentries, and prays hard, hard, hard: here, come on down, there are vessels waiting for you to keep watch, to keep my little baby brother safe.  
  
Mom gets rid of them every time she comes home from work. Dean doesn’t know if she trashes them or hides them someplace safe—just that they’re gone, gone, gone, and Dean, as he plays with his little brother on the floor, as he crawls after him, wiggling his butt in the air and whispering, “Gonna get you, Sammy, gonna get you and never let you go” before he play-pounces in the air, holding himself over Sam as he laughs a gurgling sort of chuckle, squealing and smiling and reaching for Dean’s face with his tiny little hands, so insistent that Dean takes them in his, kisses his arm because his palms are just too small, drags his teeth light enough to just tickle, which Sam just loves, feet kicking up, laughing and laughing, smiling and smiling a smile so gosh darn big it would show all his teeth if he had any. So Dean does it again and again, telling Sam, “I love you so much I’m gonna eat you, just like this, see—“ and he does it again until Dad tells him to stop aggravating the baby and Mom says that cannibalism is frowned on in most societies and that the baby is not a tiger that you can play rough with—but Dean can tell she wants to say more, the way she buttons her lips up and glares at the stuffed tiger, at Cas, who’s just watching without saying anything, just watching over them like the angels always do.  
  
Once Dad catches him sewing up another stuffed animal out of one of Grampa Bobby’s knee high argyle socks, and he’s got a thimble stuck on his third finger, moistening up the tip of the thread with his tongue so it’s easier to poke through the eye of the needle, but Dad doesn’t care about any of that. Just drags him up by the collar of his t-shirt, pushes him into the bathroom where he starts the water running while he grips Dean’s chin in his hands, tilts it backwards up towards the bathroom light so that Dean has to wince his eyes shut, vision blotting and searing into his brain.  
  
“What is this crap on your face?” Dad says, dragging a thumb across his cheeks, and it comes back powdery orange and black.  
  
“Nothing,” Dean says, struggling as Dad wets toilet paper and starts scrubbing it all over, throwing wet, limp confetti bits of orange and black scraps into the trash until Dean’s face been rubbed raw and red.  
  
“That’s your Mother’s makeup, Dean.  Your mother’s. You’re not gonna be a boy for a much longer—you’re a man, Dean! Maybe your Mother shouldn’t call you her little man, Dean, if you’re not going to act like it.”  
  
“I’m not a man!” Dean shouts, squeezing his legs together, unable to tear his eyes away from the face that his Dad’s just kicked to the trash like it meant nothing. “I’m not a man,” he repeats, closing himself up as he folds his arms over his chest.  
  
His Dad bends down, leans in real close, close enough so that Dean can recognize the sickly, sweet and sour smell of whiskey on his breath (it was Cas who told him what it was) and says, “Then what are you if you’re not a man. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying that you’re the righteous man, huh?”  
  
Dean bites down on his gut instinct to say that’s what Cas said, not me, not ever me—but Dad doesn’t believe in Cas (nobody believes in Cas like Dean does, not even Mom), so he just stiffens up, pretends he’s got a mane that’s bristling and fearsome, and says, “I’m a tiger.”  
  
“Oh my fucking god! You’re too old for these childish games, Dean! It’s time to grow the fuck up. You are not a tiger, and I don’t appreciate you sassing me. Go to your room—go to your room and don’t come out until I say so.”  
  
“Fine,” Dean shouts right back, trying to get out of the bathroom, but Dad eases his bulk between him and the door.  
  
“Fine what?”  
  
“Fine, sir,” Dean says, and then Dad steps back, lets him go, tries to swat him on the way out with his hand, but Dean lunges up out of reach and runs fast as he can to his bedroom door, which he slams shut.  
  
He’s glad that Dad’s either too drunk or too hungover to make a fuss about that.  
  
Cas’s waiting for him there on the bed, huge and comforting, radiating heat like there was a fire inside him, so Dean crawls in close, settling between those heavy paws.  
  
“I wish—“ Dean says, then stops.  
  
Like xe could read minds, and heck maybe that is a thing that angels can do but Dean’s always been too much of a scaredy cat to ask, Cas says, “You never ask me to do anything to him. Never even a wish you would just gobble him up, eat him whole.”  
  
“Dad’s still my dad,” Dean says, listening to the stomp of Dad’s boots as he makes his way down the stairs.  “Still family.”  
  
“Should family really say the things that your father says to you,” Cas says, dipping xyr head and snuffling where Dean’s cheeks are still raw before dragging a pink, rough tongue to soothe the hurt, even though the barbs prick and burn—it’s different when Cas does it, and Dean nestles in closer.  
  
“At least he’s there, you know?” Dean says, immediately wincing because he hadn’t meant it like that, hadn’t meant it to be a jab about how Cas hadn’t seen xyr father in ages and ages, but maybe Cas didn’t see the insult or just didn’t care because xe kept licking his face. “What if I don’t want to be the righteous man, Cas?” Dean says.  
  
“I don’t know Dean,” Cas says.  
  
“What if I want to be a tiger,” Dean says, sounding petulant even his ears. “Can’t I be that?”  
  
Cas pauses xyr administrations, and looks at Dean with those deep blue eyes, like xyr is unpeeling him, looking at each part of him, then rebuilding him anew with just the force of xyr gaze.  
  
“Oh, don’t tell me you don’t think I’d make a good tiger,” Dean says.  
  
“I think you can be free to be whoever you want to be, Dean,” Cas says and Dean jerks his face up to look at Cas more clearly because xe said it so sad, so serious that Dean’s not sure they’re not talking about something else, but Cas has already turned xyr face away, looking out the window.  
  
Below them, they hear the door slam, the start of Dad’s car, and Dean figures that Dad’s gone out to hang out with his ex marine buddies and a bottle of whiskey. So Dean swallows hard and says, “Can I tell you something, Cas? Something I’ve never told another soul?” And Cas smiles, and Dean’s glad that xe remembers when the words left xyr lips so long ago.  
  
“What is it, Dean?”  
  
“Sometimes, almost every time I hear that door close, I hope and wish that Dad’ll go away and never come back. But then I feel like I shouldn’t think that because he’s my father, and I should want him to come back. And if he’s not coming back, then I should go looking for him, you know?”  
  
Cas relaxes a little, just says, “You’re not a machine, Dean. It’s okay to think those contradictions. You’re only human.”  
  
Dean straightens out, limbs tight and coiled, ready to run, fingers lacing through Cas’s fur as he says, “But what if I don’t want to be human?”  
  
“You are already more than I ever thought you ever could or would be,” Cas says, “for what it’s worth.”  
  
Dean flushes hot and warm but says anyway, “I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.” He falls silent a little, leans in a little closer to Cas. “You really think that?”  
  
“Really, really,” Cas says, but the words sound still a little awkward, like xe’s still tasting and trying out such a human expression, but Dean bites down hard on his laughter, and just holds Cas as tight as he can.  
  
He remembers what his Dad wants him to be, what Cas and God presumably want him to be. Guesses that Cas feels that pressure to, how it spikes up into your heart and soul. “You ever wonder,” he says sleepily, “if we’ll ever be free to be you and me?”  
  
If Cas answers, Dean doesn’t hear because he’s already asleep.  
  
Then one night, Dean wakes up choking on smoke, the house far too hot for a midnight in the fall, when the leaves were already falling, and the stars stark peepholes in the night sky.  
  
Cas, body heavy and warm, stands over Dean, a growl thick in xyr throat.  
  
“What’s happening?” Dean asks, reaching out for Castiel—“Where’s Mom? Dad? Oh my god, Sammy?” He sees them charred and broken skeletons, imagines himself as Luke Skywalker, come upon their bodies, and his voice wedges in his throat. “Cas—Castiel what’s happening?”  
  
But Cas stands, head tilted in that way that says xe’s listening, listening to something that Dean can’t hear, that isn’t the snapping lick of the flames, or the way the house creaks on the weakened floorboards or even the screaming blare of the sirens that Dean can already hear.  
  
“Don’t just stand there!” And Dean’s hands are on Cas’s flanks, shoulders, pushing, pushing, and Cas has never felt so heavy, so unmovable.  
  
“You can’t change the past, Dean,” and Cas’s voice is thick, thicker than smoke.  
  
“What the heck are you talking about?”  
  
“We can’t stop this, Dean—all roads lead to the same destination.”  
  
Dean shakes his head, forces himself to move from Cas’s side, ankles tangling up in the sheets, tripping him to the floor. He crawls on his hands and knees. “Have to save Sam,” he gasps. “Have to save Mom—have to save—“  
  
Cas’s jaws enclose soft around Dean’s neck, carrying him by the scruff like he’s some kitten, and Dean kicks out because he’s not, he’s not some kid – but Cas ignores all that, and they’re in Sammy’s room and there’s someone else in there but then Dean hears his mom’s voice coming up from somewhere above, and she’s there on the ceiling and Cas says, “Shut your eyes, shut your eyes” and even when he squeezes them, squeezes them like he thinks they’re gonna push out of his head like bug guts, he thinks he’ll go blind from the searing white light, from the blotting nebulous shadows left behind and he wonders if that smell, that singing, smoking smell that reminds him of that time he put his hand to the stove even though Mom told him not to is him, is really him—  
  
And then he can breathe again, he’s outside, and he blinks his eyes open, sees his mom there, her white nightgown streaked black with ash, Sammy in her arms, and a stuffed tiger at his feet, and their house burning beyond its skeletal frame, despite the herd of fire trucks, the arching bullet spray of the water as the firemen try to dowse the flames—  
  
“Mom?”  
  
“Shh,” she says.  
  
“What’s happening?”  
  
“Nothing. Nothing you need worry about.”  
  
Dean tugs on Mom’s nightgown because her hands are full of Sammy crying and crying, baby cheeks smudged with ash too, bit of red on his lips that Dean wonders if he got by biting his lips too hard because that’s something Dean does when he’s scared, and maybe Sam does too, and gosh, he doesn’t want Sammy to be scared anymore even though he can’t stop himself from saying, “Mom—where’s Dad?”  
  
“He didn’t make it.” Mom’s voice sharp, high. “Didn’t make it.”  
  
“Dad’s not—coming back?”  
  
“Your father’s dead. Burned to a crisp.”  
  
“What?” The word sticks in his throat, too big to force between his teeth, too sour for his tongue. “No—Cas—Cas was there. Xe—xe would have—I—“  
  
Mary looks down beyond Dean’s face to the tiger on the floor. “Nobody saved him.”  
  
Then an officer is leading Mary aside asking for her statement, and Dean staggers down the hillside, to the place where Cas and he chased each other, panted together in the sun, trying to catch their breaths. “Cas,” he prays. “Cas where are you?”  
  
“I’m here, Dean.”  
  
Dean pushes Cas, pushes xem like they used to do while playing ball, but only harder, harder, harder, so hard Dean’s falls forward with the momentum, right up into Cas’s face. “What the hell was that? You didn’t save him!”  
  
“I tried to, Dean,” Cas says, voice low and hard. “I tried to save your brother—“  
  
Dean screws his eyes up tight again. “What the heck are you talking about? Sam’s fine. Sam is fine – I’m talking about Dad. How he’s dead back there because you didn’t save him from the flames.”  
  
Cas doesn’t say anything, jaws falling open and closed, tasting the words, chewing them down when they’re the wrong one. “I’m sorry, Dean. I tried my best—“  
  
“You’re an angel! There is no try with you—there’s only do! You and your kind perform miracles,” Dean says. “I’ve learned about them in the bible in Sunday School—and you couldn’t save my dad?”  
  
The words are slow to process through Dean’s head, about saving Sam, about the blood and the flames and the shadow in the room— “And what about Sam—Sam is fine. And you would know that even if you aren’t omni-scient because he’s right there—“ and he turns, points at mom with little Sammy, still giving her statement. “What did you mean by that? He’s fine.”  
  
Castiel goes stiff, then limp, stretching on the grass. “Don’t worry. No one will touch Sam Winchester.”  
  
Dean butts into Cas’s head, ignoring the way a stuffed animal with squishy cotton for brains could still make his eyes cross and see stars. “You’re a—you’re a goddamn liar, Cas.”  
  
“Sleep,” Cas says. “You’ll see more clearly in the morning.”  
  
“Doubt it,” Dean snarls back.  
  
Even though Dean’s not talking to Cas, Dean can still see xem there, lingering in the stuffed animal even when Dean puts it in the closet in the town’s seedy motel because Mary turns down Ellen’s offer of a bed.  
  
It’s worse when Grampa Bobby comes to visit. Can hear them muttering together, hears Mom saying something about how the fire was supernatural, wasn’t human, she says, and when Dean sets accusing eyes at Castiel, Cas just says nothing that bastard, says nothing even though Dean knows xe could explain it all because xe’s an angel and knows practically everything.  
  
Bobby stays up too late, drinking cheap beer he picked up at the gas station, and one night, the one before the funeral, Dean comes out in his pjs and his bare feet, Cas set up high on the dresser, and crawls into the chair beside Bobby’s at the kitchen table. “What you reading,” he says.  
  
“Atwood. Poetry.”  
  
Dean chokes, and Bobby says, “You okay, son?”  
  
“Just—“ Dean sighs, the shadow of Castiel looming too large to be physically in keeping with the amount of light in the room. “Reminds me of something that Cas says.”  
  
“Who’s Cas?” Bobby says, taking a small sip of whisky, scrubbing his fist through his scruff.  
  
“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Just someone who said that Neanderthal poetry was—amazing. In perfect tune with the spheres.”  
  
“What the fuck is that?” Bobby says.  
  
Dean spreads his hands in his lap, palms facing upwards. “I don’t know. Gosh. I just. Don’t know.”  
  
Bobby reaches out and grips Dean’s shoulder. “Did this Cas fellow share some Neanderthal poetry with you?”  
  
“Tried to—but I didn’t understand it much. I don’t get poetry. Or words much. Bodies are so much easier to read for me.” And Dean traces the places his skin was burned from the fire, the marks on his neck from where Cas had dragged him to safety, the way his belly swells, bloated with guilt and sick feelings he wishes would go away, the fleshy corner of his mouth that Cas had licked once---  
  
“You ready for the funeral, kid?”  
  
“No,” Dean says, regretting it because what would Bobby think.  
  
“No one is really. But I tell you one thing.” Bobby looks up at him over his book. “Things are a lot better handled when you’re not about to drop dead from exhaustion like some overrode horse.”  
  
“Is that your way of telling me to go back to bed?” Dean says.  
  
“Yep. Idgit.”  
  
And Dean slides off his chair, goes back to bed, and huddles down underneath the covers.  
  
The bed is too big, too cold without Cas beside him—but Cas was hiding something. Dean knew it, could feel it like a punch over and over to his heart, his ribs, his lungs.  
  
The funeral goes for too long. Dean’s personally offended that the weather chooses to be bright, sunny, almost happy when he wants to feel the rain dribble down under his collar, giving him the chills and the shakes, the perfect excuse to huddle up under the blankets and to never ever come out again.  
  
But the weather is perverse and Castiel is persistent in the way xe lingers just outside of Dean’s eyesight, even though Dean remembers leaving Cas at home.  
  
So much for Cas’s protestations that xe wasn’t omnipresent because gosh, it felt like xe was everywhere.  
  
Maybe it was because Jo was there, with Mr. Buns, with Anna.  
  
During the wake, Dean sulks in the grass under the sun, and Cas, kitten-small, approaches him. “Dean—I can assure you that your father is in heaven—“  
  
And Dean rounds on xem, screaming that he doesn’t care because Cas has told him about heaven, and it sucks, reliving memory after memory that isn’t life, that isn’t creating new ones, and pretty soon they’re gonna be worn into holes just like Dean wears his clothes into holes, blue jeans gaping at the knees, hems unraveling—and then what would happen to his dad then, huh? What then?  
  
Dean storms away, pulling at one of the boxes one of the families had used to cart over their casseroles, drags it into the center of the lawn and scrawls in black marker Time Machine because he’s gonna go to somewhere better than this, to a heaven that wasn’t paper-thin memories, and he almost turns to ask Cas if xe wants to come but stops because xe wouldn’t get it—xe’d just say, “Where do you expect to go in a cardboard box, Dean?” in that almost-amused voice, the one that only comes when xe’s got xyr tongue curled up around xyr fangs, like xe’d say more, but xe’s an angel and they control every emotion and action and word and event except the ones that really matter.  
  
That night, when Mom’s asleep and Bobby’s back home—telling Mary that she was more than welcome to come to his place, that the place was too empty with too many empty rooms and empty beds, and Mom had said, “Okay, Bobby, okay—“ and so Bobby had left after wrangling a promise for her to move up by next week.  
  
Dean’s almost awake until he feels the mattress dip under the weight of something massive, of Cas because Dean would recognize the way Cas settles xyr weight no matter what.  
  
Dean rolls over, and breathes deep and slow like sleeping people do.  
  
“I know you’re not asleep, Dean,” Cas says.  
  
Dean says nothing back because if Cas is just saying that to trick Dean into revealing his wakeful status, Dean doesn’t want to give the game away, so he does nothing.  
  
“Perhaps it’s easier this way though—perhaps it’s easier not speaking while actually speaking.”  Cas is silent for a moment, like xe is taking a deep breath, as if xe is afraid that air will actually run out of xyr lungs and xe will know the feeling of suffocation despite whatever xe says (I’m an angel, Dean—angels don’t breathe—yeah frigging right).  “Anael and I—discussed things today. And we are unhappy with—with what we have been sent to do. We have watched for over a millennia. Always watching—and rarely ever doing until someone writes upon our stony, marble mountainsides—rules and laws and stories we must execute. I remember Sodom and Gammorah. My vessel—a righteous man—accidentally had a pebble fall into his shoe.”  
  
Dean wants to sit up, to tell xem to hurry up with the story for god’s sakes. But no, squeeze your eyes, breath through your throat like you’re almost about to snore (like Dad).  
  
“We are tired, Dean. Anael. Raphael. Me. Do you really think that transdimensional wavelengths of celestial intent would inhabit children’s toys for fun? This world staggers under its weight. I see nothing but pain here-- no salvation here--only pain. Only sadness. Is there anything worth saving?”  
  
Dean wants to say bacon cheeseburgers and Saturday morning cartoons, but he doesn’t.  
  
“The apocalypse has long been foretold,” Cas says. “There are parts to play, roles that need to be cast, and many who would do a fine job.” Silence. “You are the righteous man, Dean. One of many, yes.”  
  
Dean’s lips twitch.  
  
“You are a vessel, Dean. Worthy of the archangels. Even one as high and great as Michael. Do you know what such chosen humans were called? Weapons of god. Forged through fire, tempered steel.” Castiel’s shaggy, monstrous head hangs low. “In the age of the first civil war, there was such a one—a righteous man--who said yes, who was the weapon Michael used to plunge the devil deep into hell. The Michael-sword, the prophets called him, because he was a righteous man.”  
  
“The what?” Dean’s voice is tremulous high, shivering like a flimsy plane of steel, like when dad would hold a saw, and tell him that it was okay for him to shake it, to hear the whisper of the metal, the way it undulated and sang in the air. “The Michael-sword? The righteous man? Is that what I am, to you? I am not your plaything,” Dean hisses, wondering what it meant that he was whispering this into an angel’s ear, into a velvet thing made of machine-stitches with a washed out tag that mom had paid a quarter to someone for—to someone who had possibly bought this impossible thing in a toy aisle. “I am not your hammer. I am not your sword.”  
  
“I know,” Cas says. “I know—why do you think I’m telling you this? Spare me your rage.”  
  
“No,” Dean says, tiny hands balled into hard little fists. Then, “And what role does Sam play? Or what role are you going to groom him to play?”  
  
“Possibly play,” Cas says. “The destination may be the same, but the roads are different—can be different.”  
  
“You’re splitting straws! You’re stalling me, trying to get me off track.” He pushes Cas up against the wall, ignoring the way Cas’s lashing tail whips his thighs as Cas struggles but also doesn’t struggle to get away. “What role are you grooming him to play?”  
  
“Sam is not on the side of the angels,” Cas says after a cold, stiff moment and Dean feels his stomach bottom and hollow out.  
  
“What?” Dean says.  
  
“Sam is not on the side of the angels—“ And Dean can’t remember the last time Cas refused to look at him with those blue glass eyes that shined too bright in the dark.  
  
Dean raises his hands, lets his fingers fall from Cas’s body, Cas’s fur, Cas’s warmth. “I don’t care what you say—if you let a single demon—“  
  
“I won’t,” Cas says. “We won’t. We can make it up as we go—isn’t that what you said?”  
  
“I thought I was saying that to my friend,” Dean says. “The one who was at my side because you wanted to be there—not because heaven told you to do some mission, to make sure I made the right choices, said the right thing, performed my blocking on the world stage in just the right way.” Dean stares at his lap, laughs coarsely. “Your brother, huh? That’s what you said—about the angel meant for Sam.”  
  
“Dean—“  
  
“Brother Lucifer? Is that the brother you’re talking about?”  
  
“He is an angel.” Cas’s voice is real quiet, too quiet for a tiger, too quiet for an angel.  
  
Dean leans forward, right in Cas’s space, just like he had done all those nights ago in the fire, when Dean had put his mouth inside those gaping jaws, felt the press of xyr tongue against his cheek, xyr spit wetting his hair—but not today. Not ever. “Over my dead body,” he hisses into Cas’s ear.  
  
“I believe you—and it won’t come to that. I promise—I will let nothing happen to Sam Winchester,” Cas says.  
  
“You’ve lied the entire time you’ve been here,” Dean says.  
  
“I haven’t,” Cas says.  
  
Dean turns away, jams the pillow over his head. “Just go away,” he says.  
  
The bed feels lighter after Cas leaves and, when Dean finally summons the courage to peer out from under his pillow, one eye still screwed shut, he doesn’t see the tiger—stuffed with Castiel’s grace or just plain old regular cotton, on the bed. He pulls the blanket tighter, shivers, and tries to go back to sleep.

 

Dean slides in next to Jo on the school bus, saying only, “So did Anna say to you anything about Lucifer or the apocalypse and—stuff?” He wants to say the bad word, the word dad’s always saying, but the school bus driver is right there, listening.  
  
“No,” Jo says. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“Nothing,” and Dean kicks at the seat in front of him, kicks it until the metal’s scuffed and his toe throbs and the kid turns around and threatens to punch his face in if he doesn’t stop.  
  
Jo presses her lips and eyebrows up, returns to the book in her lap, a book about monsters, Dean sees, and he wonders vaguely if angels are under C for celestial intent or L for lying sons of bitches who lie.  
  
It’s not much better in the classroom—Dean looking at the pop quiz in math, leaning over to ask Jo what the heck 964 divided by 4 x 13 equals and, for once, she doesn’t give him a smarty pants answer, but lets him see what she scribbled down, and he does the same too, pushing down so hard the pencil lead snaps off and he stomps angrily to the pencil sharpener, sticking the yellow length of grimy wood into the grinder, the pencil shaking in the palm of his hand as the machine eats it all up, closer and closer until he’s held it in too long and there’s nothing but a yellow nub in his fingers and Ms. Collins rolls her eyes, tells him to stop disrupting the class, and loans him one of her.  
  
What’s three plus seven? Does it really matter what three plus seven is? How could he even be sure it was “ten” when this was just ultimately abstract, something in his head and in the teacher’s text and in the way Mom counted up the handful of bills she’d made in tips that night at the Roadhouse.  
  
He counts on his right hand—thumb, second finger, middle finger giver of the bird equals three. On the fourth finger starts over until he says seven just as his little finger on his left hand taps gently on his thigh.  
  
Ten because momma always said he had ten fingers and ten toes so yeah, maybe it had to be ten.  
  
But how the heck does he know the answer to the long division problem, number four, the last of the pop quiz?  
  
What does that number even mean? A collection of symbols squiggled around in the shape of numbers that say—and he leans down low, squints over his paper: two hundred eighty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-seven divided by three thousand and sixty-nine equals?  
  
Heck, he doesn’t even have enough fingers to figure out the second part—what kind of number was that? How could there be that many of something anywhere in the world? Sure he knew that there were millions of stars in the sky and millions upon millions of grains of sand in the desert—but how much was that number, was two-hundred eighty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-seven?  
  
Maybe Cas would have enough tentacles to figure it out, to count it, to show Dean what that meant, exactly—how large or, even more, how absolutely small that was—but the only thing Dean can do is slip farther and farther down his chair, chest concaving and tightening up, lungs blipping the panic button for breath as he drops his pencil, raises his hand, tells Ms. Collins that he needs to use the bathroom, and dashes out to puke into the nearest toilet.  
  
When he comes back, times up, his brain’s too big for his skull, and Ms. Collins’s telling everyone to return their papers and Jo’s already handed hers in, but she’s trying to look at Dean’s without making it obvious she’s looking at his, and he turns his in—nothing hardly answered because the numbers are just too gosh darn big for him—and she mouths Enochian (because Anna had taught them that once, on an afternoon when it was too hot to do anything fun) at him, like wow Dean, really, scribbling Enochian on your papers, like why would you do that, and Dean can’t really understand it so he just tells her to leave him the heck alone, and doesn’t lift his head from the cradle of his arms until he’s sent to the principle’s office, upon which he says he’s not feeling well, but since he doesn’t have a temperature (just because a glass thermometer says I don’t have a temperature doesn’t mean I don’t got one, Dean says indignantly) or a cough (but I threw up! What if I have the flue? Throwing up from nerves, Mister Winchester—which, somehow, makes it sound like he’s even younger than he actually is—is not the flue)—they don’t want to send him home sick, but Dean demands they call his mother and they do and he hears all the way over the line that she’s coming over to get him right now and don’t you dare send him back to class.  
  
Sometimes, even when he’s feeling lousy, Dean can’t help but grin saucily at figures of authority, and today is one of those times.  
  
The principle tells him to wait in the hall, and he does, and then Mom’s there, and she’s holding his cheeks and kissing the top of his head, saying, “Are you feeling, okay, baby?”  
  
And Dean shakes his head, no, allows himself to cling to her, to breathe her in deep, wonders if she was actually right about Cas, and grips her tight, wondering if he should just whisper sorry, I’m sorry into her neck or if he should pretend that this never happened.  
  
Mom untwines his arms from her neck and says, “I have to go talk to the principle before we leave, okay?”  
  
Dean nods, hears her yelling at him from the hallway that if Dean says he’s not feeling well, he’s not feeling well, and that you don’t make him or her jump through hoops to get him back home ever again. This should be a moment of triumph, hearing him put in his place for the first time in a long time (ever?), but Dean can’t think, can only think about how Cas told him he was the Michael-sword and how Sam was on Lucifer’s side and what the heck, what the hell, god fucking dammit this was not how friendship was supposed to work.  
  
Something pinches inside, and he rubs his chest, tries to suck in deep, steadying breaths, and Mom slips her hand in his, leads him to the car. His head falls against the window immediately, and Mom says, “You tired?”  
  
Dean nods, lets his eyes clothes as his Mom lets the impala purr purr purr, rubs her hand in his hair, and sings soft and quiet, “Hey Jude, don’t let me down. You take a sad song, and make it better—“  
  
And Dean tells himself fiercely, sternly that he is not going to cry, that if he does cry, he’ll do something to himself like punching him in the face or something tough and mean like that.  
  
“You’ll be okay by yourself if I go finish my shift, yeah?” Mary says when they pull into the driveway.  
  
Dean nods, shoulders his backpack.  
  
“You want me to walk you in? Or would you rather come with me to the Roadhouse? Sam’s there too, so that I can keep an eye on him.”  
  
Dean shakes his head—“I’m a big boy,” he says, and Mom laughs and says, “Alright, little man.”  
  
Pulls away and turns around and Dean watches her from the curb.  
  
Empty houses suck, but Dean doesn’t think he can face being around people, being asked questions he’s supposed to answer—to want to answer. Nope, not today, so he kicks off his shoes with his toes, drags himself up the stairs shivering because the holes in his socks lets in the cold, lets his backpack drop with a loud thunk, crawls into an empty bed.  
  
Before he can stop himself, he let’s out, “Cas--?” then holds his breath, face screwed up because what if Cas says back, Hello, Dean  or what if Cas doesn’t say anything at all and everything is just ten times worse because Dean doesn’t know which scenario he would prefer because if Cas says something then Dean has to decide if he wants to talk to Cas or if he wants to give him the silent treatment, but what would it mean if Cas didn’t say anything at all?  
  
Shivers goosebump their way down his spine.  
  
Would he be like Job then? Would he be crying out in answer, and would God tell him to speak about those things that you don’t understand, how dare you question me.  
  
Or would he be like the psalmist crying out, my god, my god why have you forsaken me.  
  
Because even if Cas wasn’t technically a god, he was still an angel of god—a representative of god.  
  
It was basically the same thing, wasn’t it?  
  
There’s no answer—and Dean pushes the blankets down off his bed, ankles already marbled blue from the chill, and lets a leg swing off, like he’s gonna jump down.  
  
Remembers how he wouldn’t be caught dead doing this at night because what about the monsters under the bed. Remembers how Mom had kissed his forehead and said that she’d checked and they weren’t gonna get him not ever, and how she had fallen silent when Dean had started to tell her that Cas said the same thing too—but he never had told her how Cas had explained about the salt she had put under her bed, how it was the salt that kept the monsters at bay or how Dean had said, “Or maybe your mighty roar”—and they had roared together on the bed and Dean felt the creeping blush of shame burn hot in the pit of his stomach, imagined how foolish he had looked all fours on the bed, shaking his head on his unwieldy neck, his fingers curved into claws that couldn’t rend, couldn’t tear, trying to roar when his throat was too small and his voice was too high and his teeth were too blunt to really tear somebody to pieces and, for some reason, the sharpest point of that memory was a shower of spit that had come from his mouth when he had tried for a last, final roar.  
  
Dean bit his lips, told himself to shut up, shut up, shut up! And then forced himself out of the ground, landing on his two feet, wrenching the door of his closet open.  
  
“Cas,” he says again. “Don’t ignore me when I call you—please.”  
  
A stuffed tiger with cloudy blue-glass eyes sits on the floor. It’s dusty and the velvet fur’s been rubbed raw from where Dean had clasped it too hard, played with it too hard, went all the way back to the Jurassic age and back in a cardboard box that was better than heaven because stuff happened here, they made new memories bright as brass and harder than steel instead of wearing ‘em through until they were nothing.  
  
Dean kneels down, presses right up against the tigers nose. It’s not even breathing, it’s just there.  
  
“Cas?” he says again, hating the way his voice trembles, the way his hands itch to shake this toy, to scream and shout be real, be real, be Cas again.  
  
Dean reaches out to thumb the slit of Cas’s mouth, pink and rubbery and wet with spit, but it’s just a seam with unraveling stitches. He pulls the thread out, slow, to unbind Cas’s jaws, and even then it was just decorative—the tiger’s mouth doesn’t hang open, panting for more.  
  
Dean swallows hard—slams the closet door shut, and pounds down the stairs in just his socks. He only knows of two other angels, and Raphael’s too darn scary to talk to personally, but maybe he’ll see the Finnerman kids and ask if the tree’s just a tree or if it’s a tree that can talk and hug you and maybe scare the crap out of you sometimes.  
  
Jael’s there, at the tree—fingers, long, graceful fingers dancing across the scarred wood over and over while Danny leans heavily against it, bark pressing against his wet cheeks, and Dean wants to go, wants to say, have you been left alone too, but their grief is too tangible, a broad no trespassing sign that Dean skirts away from, and continues to run until his heart flattens up against his rib cage, pushing his blood into his ears and his red-red cheeks and every breath a gaping wound in his side.  
  
He doesn’t need to knock on the Harvelle house because Jo’s outside, sitting cross-legged beside the velveteen rabbit with brown button eyes, cloth rubbed just as raw as Dean’s stuffed tiger.  
  
There’s water in her eyes when she looks up at Dean, as she closes her legs and brings her knees up to her chest so that she can clasp them with her hands. “Dean,” she says in the voice that she uses when she has to string it tight to keep it shaking.  
  
“I need to—I need to talk to Anna,” Dean says even though he knows there’s only one reason that Jo would be looking at him like that with her empty rabbit at her feet.  
  
“Anna’s gone,” Jo says. “She’s gone.” She bites her lip, looks down, jaw squaring itself over and over.  
  
“Did you—did you tell her to leave?” Dean says.  
  
Her head jerks up, hair whipping in the wind. “No. I love Anna, why would I tell her that?”  
  
Dean drops beside her, stomach flat on the ground, dead green grass poking at him through his ragged thin t-shirt, hides his flushed face in the crook of his elbow. “Oh,” he says.  
  
“Did you tell Cas to leave?” she asks.  
  
Dean wonders if “go away” was the equivalent of saying go away and never come back. “I may have? But Cas—xe said things, Jo, horrible things about Sam and—“ he buttons up his lips, and side-eyes Jo because he wants to tell her, god he wants to tell her, but what if—what if she looked at Sam different? What if she started calling him devil’s-child even as a joke? What if she thought Sam was evil? “And I was just mad,” he ends, miserably. “I just—“  
  
Jo puts her hand in his, squeezes so tight that Dean thinks she might break his bones, but he doesn’t mind. The pain slices through and it feels so good, like a line back to here, back to this earth and to these bugs eating up his shins and this dried up grass itching like heck, instead of leaving him to swim with what ifs and where are yous and what the hell is happening oh my god.  
  
“All of them are gone,” Dean says. “Cas. Anna. Raphael. Who knows who else. Why would they leave?” Well, he knew why Cas would leave—it was the way of things, wasn’t it? You wish people to go away and then they actually do leave you for good and they don’t ever come back and fuck, Dean can’t think past the lodestone around his neck—or maybe, Dean thinks, remembering his past English school work, that should be albatross.  
  
“Maybe they didn’t leave,” Jo says. “I know Anna would never, and I know that Anna said that Cas would never either—“  
  
Dean doesn’t interrupt to tell her but that was probably before, before all the bad words were said between them.  
  
“—Which means,” Jo says, breathing as she spoke, her eyes widening and her tongue licking nervously over her lips— “that they must have been taken. Oh my god, someone took them back—dragged them back to heaven with some powerful angel mojo.”  
  
“But why—why would they do that?” Dean says. “They’re angels. Siblings. Family.”  
  
Jo sighed a raspberry at him. “You—you’re seriously doubting the motives of family members? Really?”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean says. “That’s mean.”  
  
“I’m just saying,” Jo says. “Being family doesn’t stop people from being dicks to each other. Even though it probably should.”  
  
“How do we get them back,” Dean says. “How do we go after angels?”  
  
“Hunt them down,” Jo says. “My daddy was a hunter, a darn good one. And I’m gonna be one too, just like my daddy.” She takes the butter knife she always kept stashed in her belt and slices it through the air.  “You wanna come?”  
  
Dean nods quick and fast. “I do,” he says. “Let’s do it.”  
  
“Where should we start?” Jo says. “Usually there are like—footprints and stuff to follow. I ain’t ever heard of a hunt starting just because kids came home to find their childhood friends gone without a trace.”  
  
Dean looks down at the empty velveteen rabbit. “If they were dragged back to heaven,” Dean whispers, “then that means we should be able to follow them there.”  
  
There’s a beat before Jo sucks in her breath.  
  
“I mean, heaven’s the after life,” Dean says. “Where people go when they die. And sure, preacher says there’s a hell too, and even Cas said as much, but—“ and he looks up at Jo who’s standing over him, mouth open, “—but we’re the righteous ones—all the angels said so. If we die, we got an express ticket to glory hallelujah forever after.”  
  
“If we die—“ Anna says.  
  
“It wouldn’t have to be permanent,” Dean says. “Like, Bible’s full of stories of people coming back from the dead, and people do it here all the time anyway. Every time someone’s heart stops beating and a doctor frankensteins them back to life again—yeah, it happens, Jo—I bet we could do it. But we’d need to do it together so that the other person can be sure to bring the other back. And even if the other person fails—“ Dean shrugs sharp and hard, breath jerky in his mouth, forcing his words out stuttering and clipped “—to bring the other back. These are angels, dude, they can bring anybody back.”  
  
Jo heaves a steadying breath. Says, “Okay. Okay. We can do this.”  
  
“We can.”  
  
They look at each others feet—Dean still in his socks, Jo in her scuffed converse—until Dean says, “How would we go about—you know. Sending the other off to heaven.”  
  
“It’d have to be something we could pull the other back from death,” Jo says. “So stabbing’s out, so’s shooting, so’s anything that’d require a current cuz we don’t have those thingies—“ and she mines rubbing her hands together and shouting clear and Dean nods.  
  
“But we can do cpr,” Dean says. “We’ve seen it, we’ve been taught it, right?”  
  
“Yeah, one of the first things my Daddy taught me, even before he taught me about handling a knife.”  
  
“The lake,” Dean says. The one out behind their properties, the one where Cas taught Dean how to catch a fish and let it go because Dean had wanted to not step on that fish even though Cas tried to explain that it wasn’t the same fish and Dean said he knew that gosh darnit this is why it was called a game of pretend.  
  
Jo rubs her wrist over mouth, but nods. “I heard that drowning hurts an awful lot. Even just accidentally breathing in a mouthful of water hurts like heck.”  
  
“It won’t be deep enough for a regular drowning. You think you could hold me down so I don’t jump again, flopping like a fish?” Dean says.  
  
Jo snorts at him, says, “You think you could hold me down?”  
  
They scramble to their feet, eying each other, fists jammed on their hips, legs spread wide apart, ready to fight, ready to run into each other like bulls.  
  
“Flip a coin for it,” Jo says.  
  
“Don’t have a coin,” Dean says, and when Jo rifles through her pockets and sees they too are empty of coins, he says, “Rock-paper-scissors for it.”  
  
“Best two out of three?” Jo says.  
  
They spit in the palms of their hands and shake on it, then ready their fists over their palms. Count, one-two-three, bodies bobbing to the beat, Jo landing down on paper, Dean on scissors, and then, on the second time, Dean’s rock beats Jo’s scissor and she throws up her hands, mouth twisting up into a snarl, as she twists around, throwing a punch into the air while she kicks at a clump of weeds, scaring off a fragile cloud of dandelion puffs into the wind.  
  
Throat working up and down, Jo turns back, and says, “You ready?”  
  
“Yep.” They pick up their stuffed animals, make their way to the edge of the lake.  
  
Dean peels off his dirt crusted socks while Jo kicks off her shoes, rolls her jeans up to the knee, takes off her shirt so she’s just wearing her pants under the sun. “Keeping mine on so that I get nice and heavy,” Dean says.  
  
“Taking mine off so that I keep myself nice and light and only have to worry about your dead weight.”  
  
Dean figures there’s a joke in there somewhere but it’s not very funny now. He inches his way to the water’s edge, jerking back as the cold water laps ice kisses against his toes. “You sure you know how to do CPR,” he says as he climbs deep enough for the water splash against his shins. His jeans stick to his skin, start to itch like everything and the goosebumps are so stark against him that he tries to burn them away with a scrub of his palms.  It’s hard to speak with a blue tongue and blue lips and blue words.  
  
“Probably better than you,” Jo says, voice hard and lean.  
  
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m the one goin in then.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
He’s up to his neck and his feet are still solid on the stony bed of the lake, so Dean forces himself to take a breath on one, a deeper breath on two, and a veritable gulp of air on three before he sinks below the surface.  
  
It’s surreal under the water, the way the sunlight breaks off into shafts, the way things float, the way there’s just the roar of the water, like it’s the only voice worth listening to in his ears.  
  
His lungs prod him to return to the surface, to replace their exhausted oxygen.  
  
But he forces himself to stay down until his legs start to kick on their own accord and oh my god he needs air, air, air but he can’t break the surface because Jo’s holding him down, even though his legs and his arms are thrashing Jo’s holding her down and oh god she’s so strong, how can she do it, and his mouth’s about to open, think it’s a goddamn fish and it’s gonna find any useable air down here in the water—  
  
But then someone’s pulling him out by his hair, by the scruff of his neck—oh my god is it Cas? – but it’s just his mother and it’s just Ellen dragging Jo back to the shore by her elbow, and everyone is yelling, and Jo’s kicking at Ellen, at the water, at anything she can because she’s got to find Anna, they’ve got to rescue her, and Dean’s coughing out a little bit of water as Mom claps him on the back, asking him what the fuck do you think you were doing oh my god what the fuck were you doing and Ellen is screaming at Jo, shaking her by her shoulders, “This family has lost enough Joanna Beth Harvelle, this family has lost enough—you could have killed him, what were you thinking--“ and Jo just surges up, eyes hot like fire, shouting right back, “I was hunting like my father, I was hunting for someone I loved, because I’m tired of losing family too, I’m tired of it—“  
  
And silence descends sudden, like a storm sometimes stops for a brief few moments and there’s sun and everybody’s breathing heavy, Ellen like she’s just been slapped, Mary still holding on to Dean’s hair, to his neck, while her other hand’s trying to strip him out of his wet things, and there’s just the echoes of Jo’s voice, tired of losing family, losing family, too until Ellen says, voice tight, “We’re leaving.”  
  
Dean tries to pick up the stuffed tiger that had once housed Castiel, but Mom won’t let him, won’t give him enough give to do it himself, though she does stoop down and picks it up herself, her fist tight around the animal’s neck.  
  
They walk part of the way together but not because they’re so far apart—Ellen dragging Jo by the hand, and Mom guiding Dean by squeezing his shoulder, not quite breaking ways until they swerve off to each their respective houses, and it’s not until they’re well and truly alone that Mom speaks. “What the fuck was that about, Dean?”  
  
“I had to go find Cas,” Dean says.  
  
Mom juts out the hand holding the tiger, still white-knuckled around its neck. “It’s right here, Dean, it is right here, not at the bottom of a goddamn lake.”  
  
“That’s not Cas,” Dean says. “It’s just a toy that’s not Cas, Momma, I have to find Cas.”  
  
“You don’t,” Mom says. “If Cas is gone then that is not your responsibility to go hunt xem down. Do you hear me?”  
  
“But, Mom—“  
  
“Do you hear me?” Mom hisses. “Cas is an angel, is a creature of the supernatural—and is not to be trusted, do you hear me?”  
  
Dean opens his mouth, then swallows what he was gonna say with a hiccough because hadn’t he just yesterday told Castiel that xe was a lying liar who lies? What would Mom say if she really knew everything?  
  
Any chance to find Cas to either save xem or confront xem or—whatever else Dean decided to do in that moment—would be taken away.  
  
And Dean could not bear that happening for the world, so he does what he’s told, takes his bath without complaining with Mom listening outside the door, goes to bed, tries to fall asleep even though he knows Mom is sitting next to him like Cas had done so many times even if she is in a chair as opposed to the bed.  
  
It takes Mom a long time to get comfortable leaving Dean alone, but she does and he makes a mess of her makeup, trying to be the tiger, to remember those times Cas had chased him around the yard, the way Cas had never really broken through to the bone (though maybe xe had, maybe xe was in Dean’s very marrow)—but sloppy, so sloppy, and the stripes sweated off in the sun, and Dean pounds the walls of the shower, whimpering in frustration as the powder washed off in an orange and black swirl down the drain.  
  
After a while, when Dean tries to put on tiger stripes, Mom says, “Why don’t we do it like an adult” and she brings him to the store and they buy orange and black nail polish, and she helps dean put it on--at first, just alternating colors but as Dean grows up and he becomes more used to it, he learns how make each nail a tiger in and of itself, a swatch of striped fur or a cruel talon, and paste-it fake nails become Dean’s new favorite thing ever.  
  
And at first, Dean just had one eye shadowed orange and another black, but he learns how to make it art—how to paint a cat’s eye with liner and to back drop orange and black shadows with a green so dark it matches his eyes, makes them pop, gives them a depth that reminds him of Cas’s blue glass eyes, but he shoves the thought away, afraid to tell his mom because what if she takes away make up privileges or, worse, alone time for him to figure how to make his nails more real, sharper, to really give him eyes of the tiger as he bleats the song as loud as mom will let him up in his room, as he practices putting on red-red lipstick and blotting it just so that it’s perfect and neat because not all tigers get blood everywhere.  
  
It was bad, in the beginning, when Dean’s lungs still ached from the weight of the water, and he could barely sleep without looking at the tiger, willing for it to be filled with angel again. But the wound grew older just like Dean, with less hurt—Dean able to sew it shut with each passing day, each new memory, time lessening the frequency with how random things like mom opening a can of tuna, or playing ball with Jo, or seeing stained glass images of angels with their wings spread wide would tear open the stitches Dean had carefully crafted, making him bleed inside, and so messy closing it all up again, just like Dean had used to make stuffed animals for his baby brother Sammy who staunchly told anyone who’d listen that he was too old for stuffed animals anymore if ever.  
  
Before Dean knows, Sam’s old enough to go to school, and Dean’s giving him tips how to survive the first day, how to not give into bullies, and telling him who to avoid like they were the plague because they could and would make life a living hell—(and somewhere, Dean remembers how that’s not really hyperbole, how there really is someone who could make it a reality, but he tamps it down, pulls the knot even tighter, refuses to remember)—until Sam tells him to shut up, he’s a big kid now, don’t you know, knows how to do stuff on his own gosh.  
  
New kid’s in town, someone named Victor, and Dean nods at him, because he sees the sparse bit of mascara there, the gloss on his lips that adds just a touch of red, not enough for someone who’s just casually looking, but Dean sees it, and Victor sees Dean’s nails, orange on one hand black on the other hand because leave your real eyes at home and your real claws at home, mother had said, and Dean had listened because new day at the new school should start off without hitches, by being innocuous as possible, and it looks like Victor had the same idea, play it safe, just scrape on by—but they recognize each other, and they nod, and turn their eyes back to the board and pretend to pay attention.  
  
Sam tells him about his reading partner, Jake Talley, and how he’s really nice and how they both like to read the same comics and are both Marvel fans because the Hulk is boss and sometimes they just want to go smashing stuff up and how they both lost parental figures in fires when they were babies—and Dean says, voice sharp, “What?”  
  
“Yeah, when he was six months old. Lost his momma in a fire,” and Sam looks at his hands spread wide against his knees. “Told him that I lost my dad, almost lost my mom too.”  
  
Dean remembers how, long time ago, he had listened to something about fires, something about Jo too, something about Sam, and pushed it back—because it hadn’t been real, no not really, because there weren’t anything like talking animals.  
  
And so what if Meg and Ruby looked after Jake and Sam on the playgrounds, making sure they didn’t do anything too dangerous or that bullies stayed the fuck away from them, because they were just being nice, and everything that Cas—his imaginary childhood friend, emphasis on the imaginary, underline and highlight in yellow twice over—said about them being descended from angels, turned demonic in a short sojourn into hell when they accidentally died, was just his imagine, just his fucking imagination—and he thinks that maybe he should ask Jo about it, but no, they hadn’t talked about it—not until that day when Dean had gotten all wet and out of breath—so there’s no use bringing it up again after so many years, no use at all.  
  
Then, couple weeks later Victor invites Dean out to smoke some weed and Dean says, why the hell not, and they make it a date underneath the bleachers during the lunch hour, and Victor’s already waiting for Dean by the time Dean makes it out there, already lit up with someone else whom he introduces as Gordon, and they pass it to him, and he breathes it in deep, already starting to feel it loosen his tight, coiled up muscles that feel like they haven’t really relaxed since ever.  
  
“So you don’t think you’ll stay?” Victor’s asking Gordon and Gordon shakes his head.  
  
“Just passing through—“ and Dean can’t stop looking at the way he breathes shaky smoke rings. “Father’s a traveling preacher man,” and he laughs deep and throaty at that, but touched with bitterness too.  
  
“What you here for?” Victor says. “Looking for something?”  
  
“Huh,” Gordon says. “That’s my daddy’s business—not yours.” But Gordon stretches out all the way, kicks off his shoes and wriggles his toes in the green-green grass. “What you’d look for if you could cross over this United States with all its stinking sweat and despair and pain—with no hope of salvation here?”  
  
Dean flinches at the words, but looks to Victor, who’s touching up the gloss on his lips as if smoothing the way so that the words would come easier. “I don’t know,” he says. “Look for something, you know, purpose and stuff. Mom and Dad’s saying I need to start thinking about college, what I want to do with my life, and it’s like, I’m barely in highschool, you know? I just wanna make sure I get home at the end of the day, most times.”  
  
Gordon knows, words vibrating in his throat but never making it out completely. “What about you?” he says. “Forgot your name.”  
  
“Dean,” he says. Again, his mind goes back to those days, back to when his stuffed toy talked to him about purpose and destiny and fate. Is overcome with the urge to say he wants to find his friend again, the one who called him the righteous man, but that friend doesn’t exist anymore, that sentiment never did because he is the farthest thing from righteous, the one who’d been glad his father died so’s to be no longer a part of his life, the one who’d do anything to keep Sammy safe and Dean did mean anything, sometimes thought about the things he’d do to anyone who touched a hair on Sammy’s head.  
  
They don’t ask him again and they smoke in peace, lighting up another joint even though the bell’s already rung, each one not giving a shit to go back to school.  
  
He doesn’t find out about the things that Gordon hunts until a week later, until, high, stoned, and looking for remote, abandoned, lonely places to read the fanzines that’s been sent out for Star Wars in the past week, he stumbles into mid-winter, the green grass at his feet encrusted with frost, icicles fanging the shambling, rotten eaves of the cabin sitting pretty in the middle of the woods that some housing company was trying to cut down to make room for more a ritzier suburban neighborhood.  
  
Might as well enjoy before it’s gone, Dean had thought, but now, magazines wet from the sweat in his palms, confronted with the existence of winder in the middle of summer, the only thing he can think is that it was a goddamn fucking bad idea to be here.  
  
Cold hands slip under his back and he jumps, but the seeping ice’s still there, weeping down his spine, and a voice, brittle and hard, cracks in his ear, so warm and then the cold’s curving like hoar-frost around his lungs, his heart, and holy shit he can barely breathe, like that one time he broke through the ice and the water sapped his strength, hard coldness like bands of iron belted around his chest, crushing him under the weight of it.  
  
Two gunshots banish his hearing, leaves his head spinning, and the immediate coldness of the thing behind him, and then there’s just the lingering chill, seeping into his bones, his marrow. He collapses to his knees, sucks in a choking breath, and looks up to see Jo and Gordon (the very last two people he was ever thinking about seeing, to be honest) changing the rounds of their empty bullets in their sawed off shotguns and “What the fuck are you doing here?” he blurts out through marbled blue lips as he tries to rub the goosebumps from his arm.  
  
“What the hell are you doing here, Dean?” Jo says, standing over him while Gordon pours a circle of what looks like salt around them.  
  
“I’m just trying to read okay,” Dean says. “Shouldn’t you be out hunting Bambi or something instead of shooting things inside a goddamn house?”  
  
Gordon busts out laughing, then. “He thinks you hunt deer. That’s—that’s a good one.”  
  
Jo winces, sucks in her lips and then ducks her head down. “We hunt ghosts. Monsters. Demons.” She jerks her head up, chin jutted out, defiant, body squared up and ready to throw a punch. “That’s how my daddy died. Hunting some demon with yellow eyes—“  
  
“—we hunted a yellow eyed demon last year. Got away though—for now” Gordon says. “Said his name was Azazel or something. I asked him how many scapegoats he’d consumed and he laughed, said I knew my bible, yes I did, no pulling the wool over my eyes, but that there were so many more, and they’d all wander lost in the desert for forty long years, making them strong, making them thirsty, making them hungry for more and more, always more. You think it’s the same one?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Jo says, “Mom never talks about it.”  
  
Dean blinks—they’re talking about demons like they’re safe inside a warm house somewhere instead of the only house stuck in the middle of winter when it’s summer everywhere else, like they’re just commenting over their existence over a hot cup of coffee and his kneecaps are hurting from where they banged into the floor and he still feels residual cold and he does not want to know about this because if “Demons are real, then angels—must be real—“  
  
And both Jo and Gordon look at him with duh scrawled over their foreheads and Jo just says, “Of course they’re real. You’ve spoken with angels, don’t you remember?”  
  
Dean laughs the sort of cough that’s sour, makes his mouth all pucker up, as he presses his fist against his forehead. “No way, come on,” he says. “There’s no such thing as angels and if there were they wouldn’t possess stuffed animal toys.”  
  
“Mine did,” Gordon says. “My teddy bear. Said his name was Uriel.” Gordon rummages through the desks, sifting through papers, and Jo joins him. “Told me all kinds of stories,” and he looks at Dean, eyes warm and hard at the same time, “told me all about how he cleansed the cities and the towns full of sin and wickedness and how the same was coming to this world, and that we would remind the world what it meant to be filled and purged with a righteous fury.”  
  
“We’re the righteous ones, Dean. We spoke with angels.”  
  
“Yeah, and fat lot of good it did,” Dean says, finally standing to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “They left, didn’t they?”  
  
“Uriel didn’t leave me,” Gordon says. “He left because he said his siblings had been dragged back to heaven, something about getting too close to the humans in their charge. Said bad things happened up there. Said he had to make sure that no permanent harm came to them.“ Gordon looks down at his feet. “He was so angry. Sometimes—“ and Gordon shakes his head, licks his lips – “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Uriel had still been there. If the vampires woulda still come. Or if he would have smote them like the perversions they are. If he could have saved—“ he breaths deep, exhaling all the way, his eyes wide and wet, breath shaking in his throat, in his chest. “But none of that matters now. Shit happens, as they say.”  He blinks, scrubs his fist over his eyes. Then picks up a piece of paper. “Look. A death certificate. Ready to dig up some bones?”  
  
While Dean and Jo dig up the corpse, Gordon stands guard, and tells Dean all about the hunting business, how to get rid of ghosts and poltergeists, what to do if he were to come across a djinn, and then he and Jo trade tips about various types of monster hunting.  
  
When they drop the match into the grave, and when they’ve made sure that the ghost has been laid to rest, Gordon shoulders his bag, says he’s off to find more monsters to hunt, more geeks to save, he adds with a too-hard punch to Dean’s shoulder that makes him wince and cradles his arm.  
  
“One last thing before I go,” he says. “Your angels ever mention anything about the coming war? With Lucifer?”  
  
Jo shakes her head, but Dean says, “May have been mentioned.”  
  
“ ‘Cause Lucifer’s an angel, too. Which means there are probably other kids like us—been speaking with angels—or demons, most like. I’ve already figured some of it out—nursery fires on the would-be vessels’ six month birthday. Don’t know the significance, but I’ve found demons trailing around those same kids, keeping them safe. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”  
  
Dean steps on Jo’s foot when he sees her look over her shoulder at him, mouth already open to say god knows what.  
  
Gordon’s eyes narrow a little, but he just says, “Uriel always said that a good defense was a good offense. Even if the devil was let loose on the world, he’d still need a vessel. If there are no available vessels--” and Gordon smiles, shrugs and raises his arm wide, clicking his teeth together.  
  
Dean wonders if Gordon already knows about Sam—if this is his warning, if he’d really go after Sammy.  
  
“Goodbye—it was fun,” Gordon says. “Stay away from demons, yeah?” And he winks a little when he says it, but one eye holds Dean’s gaze and Dean nods back, swallows hard.  
  
“Hey!” Dean calls out, his voice surprising him. He’s not sure what he wants to say—to be big brother tough and tell Gordon to stay the hell away from Sam or to be newly initiated pupil and ask Gordon what the hell he should do about all this shit he just discovered existed, ghosts and demons and coming apocalypses. Instead, he just says, “Did Uriel ever say anything about coming back?”  
  
Gordon grins. “Yeah. He sure did. Promised one day they’d all return.”  
  
“They haven’t yet,” Dean says, and god, he hates how bitter his voice sounds. He was over this. Happy with the belief that angels did not exist, that school boy make-believes made the heart hurt a little too much with a weird ache that didn’t fit quite right—but now, now that the whole thing was true, that he just hadn’t made it all up to make up for his daddy issues or whatever—the hollow, numb feeling inside is going to swallow him whole.  
  
“I have faith,” Gordon says. “And righteous resolve and intent on my side.” He touches his fingers to his forehead, a business casual salute, then he’s dipping inside his car, revving up the engine, and driving, driving, driving away, leaving Dean standing in the middle of the road with dirt and dried up sweat caking his skin until Jo comes and stands next to him, and they watch the retreating lights of Gordon’s red mustang together.  
  
Dean says, “Jo. I think I’m gonna be sick.”  
  
She slips her hand in his, squeezes it hard, hard enough to crush his bones he must think. “It’s gonna be alright. We’re gonna win this. Earth is ours, not heaven’s or hell’s.”  
  
Dean helps Jo load up all her hunting crap, each shouldering a bag, as they hike their way back to town. When it’s dark, too dark to see each other’s faces, when stars pin-pricked the sky, Dean says, “You think that maybe Uriel was talking about Anna? Or Cas?”  
  
Jo tightens up, shoulder blades squeezing together. “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess. Does it matter, really?”  
  
“I don’t know. I just guess that she’s the only angel I know of who didn’t go by her real name. Sounds like something heaven may have frowned at, you know? Maybe a little too human?”  
  
“It was her idea that I call her Anna,” Jo says, voice strung tight. “Because I was having trouble pronouncing Anael back in the day. And besides, if you’re going to say that Anna got too attached to me, what about you and Castiel, huh? You took xem everywhere with you, don’t deny it. You wanted to drown yourself so that you could climb the stairway to heaven just to find xem.”  
  
Dean can’t help the laughter spitting up through his teeth. “They lied to us—and Anna too. Did she even mention Lucifer to you? Because Cas didn’t—not until it was too late. Not until Sam—“ then he’s biting his lips with his teeth, running his fist into his palm, wanting to destroy something, bust up Mom’s impala (the one she’d promised to him, the one he’d make sure kept running all pretty and good), tear up his room, and rip up the grass from the yard where he had once played with angels.  “Not until it was too late for Sam.”  
  
Jo breathes fast and quick, holds it. “Sam is—?”  
  
“Yes,” Dean says. “And Cas knew the entire time and didn’t do shit to stop it.”  
  
“But xe did though,” Jo says, voice quiet. “Like—according to what Gordon said, the mothers always died in the house fires. But not yours. Didn’t you say that Cas saved her? Maybe—maybe xe just didn’t get there in time. It’s not like xe is omniscient or omnipotent.”  
  
Dean remembers when his six year old tongue was trying to get around those big words—the memory is overwhelming, sharp and full of ache. “I don’t care,” Dean says.  
  
“What are you gonna do—now that you know?” Jo says.  
  
“Whatever I have to do,” Dean says.  
  
It’s not until later that he finds out that Mom used to be quite the hunter herself—and he only finds out because she came home early one day only to see him dicking around with some of Grandpa Bobby’s books about hunting and she’s yelling while Bobby watches over his beer, saying shit like, “It’s in his blood, Mary—leave the boy be. He’s old enough to make his choices” – and then later, she’s deep in her own bottle of whiskey, and she’s bent double over the table, talking into the crook of her elbows while Bobby holds her hands. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, Bobby, I just wanted everyone to be safe,” and Dean pauses, pressing salt into shotgun shells, emotions coiling and whiplashing all around him, wonders if he should tell Mom that this is why he’s doing this, to keep Sam safe, to keep the family that they do have safe, but he can’t, he can’t let her worry.  
  
When they grow up, Victor joins the police force, and helps make sure that all events of a supernatural nature that cross his desk goes to Dean or Gordon or any of his other hunter friends instead of someone on the police force who wouldn’t be so equipped to handle that sort of thing.  
  
So they hunt and they try to find answers about the apocalypse—Dean even finds a prophet (with Becky’s help) and wow for a prophet, Chuck is really unhelpful.  “Writing is hard,” Chuck says. “And in the bird’s eye view of things—all of this—“ and he waves his head in a vaguely all directional way – “is a story that has already written. Whatever’s gonna happen between you and your brother—or some other special kid and their righteous sibling—has already happened. A righteous kid is going to break and then the special kid will make deals with the devil dancing down a road paved with good intentions, no doubt, unlocking the right number of seals to let the devil loose even as they try to save the world from the devil in the same breath—which brings the literary irony of this already sad, sad tale to an almost tragic perspective.” He slams his hand down on a big leather-bound bible. “It’s canon. Practically.”  
  
Becky blows raspberries at that and says, “Come on, Dean.” Takes him to a local coffee shop and tells him not to get discouraged because this—this here, isn’t anything that can’t be written over and red marked to hell and back again (hopefully not literally though, Becky adds helpfully). “Besides,” Becky says, determinedly after slamming one of Chuck’s pulp fiction paperbacked prophecies closed, “fuck the canon. That’s what writing your own story is all about you know. Screw the rules.”  
  
Dean doesn’t have the heart to tell Becky that this isn’t one of her fanfictions, then feels like a dick because duh of course she knows that too but that isn’t the point, she’d say, and yeah, maybe she’s right but still.  
  
Just as they’re about to leave—her to get back to finding out a new way out of this and he to hunting and saving people and keeping an eye on Sam, she says, “Don’t you remember when you used to do this as a kid with Castiel? Playing made up games with made up rules? It’s just like that, don’t you think? Only harder. Charlie would say that that was easy mode and this is the highest level of difficulty—but you know, it’s the same game? Kind of.”  
  
“Only this time through it’s a lot worse,” Dean says, but he hugs her anyway, kisses the top of her head.  
  
Later, special kids, including Sam and Jake goddamnit, are scooped up by the yellow-eyed demon, and Dean, Gordon, and Jo, go off to find them in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by thick forests too impenetrable to drive through, and Dean cracks a joke about finding sleeping beauty there because he’ll say anything at this point to take his mind off the reality of Sam gone when he had promised he’d look out for him, always.  
  
“These demons aren’t sleeping and they aren’t beautiful,” Gordon snaps back, and Dean raises his hands in apology.  
  
They find Sam stumbling his way through the woods, trying to get to the roads, face smeared with mud, and blood on his hands. “Jake said yes,” Sam says, voice shaking, “Jake told Yellow Eyes that he’d do anything he wanted—just as long as he let the others go, and didn’t touch a hair on the head of his family.”  
  
Lead settles in the pit of Dean’s stomach as he holds Sam close to him. He thinks that Gordon might want to hunt Jake down, but they know Jake. It’s not until they’re collecting themselves at the Roadhouse and they hear about Jake opening up a gate to hell that Gordon shakes his head, starts cleaning and arranging his guns. “We should have gone after him,” he says. “We shouldn’t have let this happen.”  
  
Dean and Jo look up. Jo just swallows hard, but Dean says, “He’s our friend.”  
  
“Was our friend. He emptied Hell’s belly onto earth.” Gordon’s voice is sharper than the knife he carries in his boot. “The deaths that come later? Is on us. We could have stopped him, stopped him from letting the demons loose. But we didn’t. And whoever’s blood falls because of that? Is on our hands.” Gordon shakes his head. “We’re hunters. We’re supposed to save people. Not set death and tribulation upon them.”  
  
Gordon leaves after that, and Dean gets up to follow him, but Jo holds him back. “Leave him be. Give him his space, Dean.”  
  
So Dean does.  
  
Gordon never really comes back after that and, sometimes when Dean’s in the impala driving a lonely stretch of highway, Dean’ll put in music that Gordon used to sing along to, that they both did, and Dean’ll sing just under his breath. Tries to catch up with Gordon at one point, but Gordon’s always been a better hunter than Dean, knows how to sneak up better, knows how to cover his tracks better, and Dean gets it, he gets it, and he’s backing off now, Gordon, are you happy?  
  
Sometimes, when Dean’s had a little too much to drink, he prays, Come on, Castiel, get your ass down here and help, but, whenever he squints his eyes open, he’s still alone at his table, no pad of barely sheathed paws behind him, no hot breath heating up his neck, no soft growl to remind him that this is a goddamn angel of the lord and he’s just one tiny human.  
  
Dean doesn’t see Gordon again for a long time—and when he does meet, it’s only after Gordon’s come out the side of a vampire fight a little worse for wear, with a bite on his neck, and vampire blood smeared in the open wound.  
  
Dean sees it, scrubs his mouth a with a hand that tastes like dirt and gunpowder to dam up the words he wants to say, words like, you son of a bitch why didn’t you ask for help. Words like, where the fuck have you been? Words like, you want to catch a drink after this fight like the good old days? His hand catches them all, thank god, and they sour unsaid on his tongue.  
  
“You gonna kill me, Dean?” Gordon says.  
  
Dean shakes his head.  
  
“I’m a vampire, Dean, aren’t you supposed to hunt down monsters?” Gordon’s sidling closer, and Dean refuses to move, refuses to be scared.  “Isn’t that what you do? The family business?”  
  
Dean says nothing.  
  
“Do nothing, then. Do nothing like you did nothing when Sam was taken. When Jake Talley said yes. All you do is do nothing. You’d rather let the world burn than to kill your friends. You think they’re more important than the world.” He shakes his head, drags a hard nail across the wall. The scraping sound sending chills down Dean’s back. “You think you’re feelings are more important than the world.” He’s right up in Dean’s personal space, and he leans close into Dean’s ear. “News flash, Winchester: they’re not.” He circles around Dean, mouth close to the shell of Dean’s other ear. “You’re not.”  
  
Dean licks his lips, “I never said I was.”  
  
Gordon steps back. Laughs. “Your actions do your talking for you—don’t you know that yet?” Gordon rubs his tongue over the sharp points of his fang, then, with a grimace, sheaths them. “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do, Dean. I’m going to do whatever it takes to stop the apocalypse. And then I’m going to do to myself what every good hunter does to any monster that crosses their path. Since you’re too much of a coward to do it yourself.”  
  
“Gordon—“ but Gordon’s already gone.  
  
Gordon kept his word—still kept trying to save the world even as a vampire. Would sometimes send word about seals that were being threatened, and Chuck would tell them about other seals, but it doesn’t matter.  
  
They fall one by one and heaven is silent as hell spreads like fire over the earth, killing human and demon alike.  
  
That night, Dean wonders if Gordon ever prays to Uriel, if he prays for this burden to be taken from him. Wonders if there’s any use in praying when no answer ever, ever came. He bends double over the table, hot cheek pressed against cool wood. Wonders if the righteous one, the first seal, has already been broken, wonders who it was and what they did. Gordon by becoming a vampire—but he’s still fighting the good fight, purpose strong and true as ever. Surely that couldn’t count? Was it Jo? But she followed in Gordon’s footsteps, right there in the front lines. Was it him? The one who would rather keep his brothers and friends alive than save the world? But wasn’t it possible to do both? To have his cake and eat it too?  
  
Maybe the whole thing was bullshit. The Bible said there was no one righteous, not even one. The only thing that mattered was what you did, right? Wasn’t that the way of the world?  
  
Maybe God was just making it up as he went along. Maybe the angels were too.  
  
Maybe they all were.  
  
Regardless, the apocalypse comes upon them—comes when Gordon goes after Jake, and Jake, trying so hard to fix his mistake of opening the hellgate the first time,  accidentally breaks open the devil’s cage and sets him loose like a prowling lion instead.  
  
Meg and Ruby escape, Ruby dragging Meg by the hand, who refuses to tear her eyes from the destruction her father Lucifer rages on righteous demon and men alike, turning back for one last look upon her father’s face, and though she does not turn into a pillar of salt, salt water seeps from her eyes and it’s only because of Ruby that she escapes alive.  
  
Sam welcomes them into the haven the Roadhouse offers, and both Ellen and Mary give them their Mom-eyes, the momma bear grizzly eyes, eyes that threatened to send them back to hell if they touched one hair on the heads of any of their kids. But Meg and Ruby remember Mary from before, when she had tried to save them from hell, and they never say thank you, but sometimes, when Dean looks up from his book or his beer, he sees them playing cribbage or solitaire at the same table, and their heads are bent together and it’s hard to remember that they’re demons.  
  
They all hear rumors about Gordon organizing the vampires and the shapeshifters and the ghosts and the ghouls to combat the horrors unleashed by the horseman and Lucifer and his fallen angels.  
  
Dean wakes up in the middle of the night and hears Sam praying, and he rolls over, stuffs his pillow into his ears.  
  
Wonders if Gordon has as much as faith as Sam that the angels will return.  
  
They find the colt, try to kill the devil, and fail. Their friends die, and Jo’s leg gets mangled off by a hell hound and her belly all scarred up from their hungry claws. Doesn’t stop her from fighting though.  
  
It’s two minutes to midnight, and they gather in Ellen’s road house, breaking out the last of the whiskey because the devil still walks the earth, and the door slams open, and Chuck, wet bath robe sticking to his knees, hands fluttering wildly about, says, “Jake is going to say yes to Lucifer, it’s the end, the very end.”  
  
“No way,” Sam says, head jerking up. “Jake would never say yes.”  
  
“Well, it’s not like he’s bought into what the devil’s selling,” Chuck says. “It’s more like—he’s going to say yes, and then he’s going to try to jump into hell, bringing the devil down with him.”  
  
Sam’s face pales. “But that means—Jake would be in hell. For an eternity.”  
  
“If he even succeeds in doing that—Lucifer is strong. There’s no way---there’s just, no way. At all.” Chuck shakes his head.  
  
“I believe in Jake,” Jo says, her voice quiet. “He’s strong. Stronger than Lucifer.” She goes back to cleaning her shot gun.  
  
Chuck’s eyes go wide, before he sits down, and he doesn’t even have to ask Ellen for whiskey before she’s pouring him a shot. “You really think that one man can do what armies haven’t been able to do?” Chuck’s voice is flat, defeated, limp as his bedraggled bathrobe.  
  
“That doesn’t mean he has to die alone,” Dean says, scraping his chair back, climbing heavily to his feet. “Anybody know how to get word to Gordon?”  
  
“Becky’s on it,” Chuck says.  
  
“Good.” Dean nods, flexes his hands behind his back. “You’ll brief them on whatever vision told you about this turn of events?”  
  
“Of course,” Chuck says.  
  
Then Dean goes outside because Sam was always better at conceptualizing Chuck’s ramblings into a concise nutshell that Dean found easier to swallow. So he goes outside to stand under a grim sky, stormy with clouds, like the weather was on the same page with every single other of Chuck’s prophecies, and was anxious to be suitable and obliging in the name of artistic symmetry, metaphor, and allegory.  
  
Dean licks his lips, hopes the words’ll come easier now that nobody will probably be hear tomorrow. One last hail mary, as it were. “God?” he says. The word sounds terribly lonely said aloud under the night sky like that. “Are you listening? Are you there?”  
  
There’s not even the sound of crickets chirping. Dean won’t kneel, but he squats on his haunches, runs his finger through the brown, dried up grass. “Cas? Are you up there? Can you hear me?”  
  
It’s too weird praying to a childhood friend. It’s too weird praying to someone you couldn’t even see.  
  
It’s too weird praying for someone to come back after you told them to go away and never come back.  
  
“I’m not gonna say sorry,” Dean says. “I was just a kid and maybe you were too, in your own way. Been singing praise god glory hallelujah for so long maybe you forgot what it was like to have free will, if you even ever had it. Jo says Anna told her that you didn’t—well, that’s what she thinks now. What Anna told Jo was that she’d never had chocolate cake before and never even had had the chance to try it before.” He licks his lips. God this is so silly. “I know you were just trying to do what you thought was right. Just like me. Just like Sam. Just like Jake. Just like Gordon. Just like Jo and Ellen and Mom.” He wrinkles up his forehead. “But sometimes, it just doesn’t work out that great.” He laughs then. “And I guess it’s weird ‘cause here we are, doing it all over again. That’s the thing about life, I guess, is that it’s too easy to make perfectly horrible mistakes.” Dean flicks a pebble with his finger, remembers how he showed Cas how to skip stones across the smooth surface of a lake. “Please come back? Please.”  
  
He starts when Jo slides her hand along his shoulder. “I pray to Anna every day. Sometimes, I have the most horrible dreams—and I think it’s her, also crying out, praying for me, and I—I don’t know how to help her.”  
  
“Somewhere,” Dean says, “there are gods somewhere praying to us. One of Grandpa Bobby’s favorite poems.”  
  
“Hmm,” Jo says from behind him. “Isn’t that prayer though? Hello, goodbye, please don’t just be an echo, let us not exist in this void of nothing.” Jo falls silent for a moment. Then, “I’ve often wondered about hell. They talk about the torture chambers Lucifer was locked up—alone, with no one to talk to. No one to hear him, even if he were to say anything at all.” Jo sucks in her lips. “I get cold just thinking about it.” Then, “No one deserves that. Hell shouldn’t even exist.”  
  
“Maybe we can take it down,” Dean says.  
  
“Maybe heaven, too,” Jo says. “If the screams I hear in my dreams is really Anna, out of reach, then I don’t see how it’s any different at all from the cries of those trapped in hell.”  
  
Meg and Ruby come out from the shadows, arms folded over their chest. “We’re descended of angels, of hell and heaven. We won’t be denied our inheritance—and if that means carving a paradise on earth or refurbishing heaven or hell—well then—“ and Ruby caresses the line of her dagger, and then the cheek of her sister.  
  
Nobody’s expecting the sky to crack and flash with lightening, or for the earth to shake beneath their feet, sending them stumbling to their knees, their hands fumbling for their weapons.  
  
Nor were they expecting a naked woman to walk amongst them with a tiger, larger than life, the earth shuddering beneath xyr paws, prowling beside her as she raises her arms in supplication, be not afraid, her hair fire-red, shining as fierce and hot as her eyes, and it’s only Jo who can look upon her without shielding her face with her hands, only Jo who can stagger to her feet, shaking the dirt from her jacket, and come to the figure before them, reaching out tentatively to touch, until she takes Jo’s hands in hers, guides Jo so that she’s cupping her face with her palms, smoothing her hair from her eyes, and whispering, “You’re here, you’re really here.” Jo, pressing a kiss to the Anna’s forehead, whispering over and over, “You’re real. You’re real.” And they embrace each other until Jo shrugs out from her green jacket, and drapes it around Anna.  
  
Dean crawls to his feet, wiping his grimy hands against his trousers, unable to tear his eyes away from the tiger, unable to stop himself from saying, “Cas?”  
  
Xe turns, and Dean can already see xyr muscles coiling like when he was young, xyr tail whipping xyr flanks, and he’s already bracing himself for the way Cas is upon him, front paws planted on his chest like when they first met all those years, can already feel the press of Cas’s fangs as xe whispers in his ear, “Hello, Dean.”  
  
He pushes against Cas’s weight, and Cas allows him to sink his hands into xyr fur, to really feel the solid weight of xem. Allows Dean to push Cas to the ground instead, to climb and straddle xyrstomach so that he can look down into those blue eyes, untamed with no glass cage to constrain them.  
  
And if Dean looks too long, he thinks he sees the shadow of an oxen head, of a lion, and he wonders just how many faces Castiel has, and if Cas would ever trust him enough to reveal xemself to him.  
  
He pants against Cas at the very thought, and the rough slide of Cas’s pink tongue against his cheek, his lips, brings him back to the eve of the apocalypse, clock well beyond the last hour.  
  
Then Cas pushes Dean off, and they climb to their feet.  
  
They rally together—Jo with Anna beside her, and Dean, hand on Cas’s broad shoulder. They meet up with Gordon, Uriel, in the form of a stag, marching beside him.  
  
“You think we can do it? You think we can save the world?” Dean asks Gordon.  
  
And Gordon, no longer hiding his vampire fangs, looks around at the angels and the demons and the monsters and the humans making up their host. “I have faith,” he says.  
  
“So all we gotta do,” Jo says, “Is save Jake Talley, then go after heaven, hell, and purgatory.” She prepares her gun, looks at Anna who’s wearing some of Jo’s old clothes, an angel blade tight in her hand. They nod at each other.  
  
“Why did you pray, Dean?” Cas says. “I’ve seen into your heart—and that is your problem, Dean. You have no faith. And yet you prayed. And though it wasn’t your prayers that released me from heaven—it was Raphael who released us after Michael sought the battlefield to confront Lucifer, weary of the fighting and the confrontation—I find myself curious as to why you prayed.”  
  
Dean bows his head, curls his fingers into Cas’s fur. “Hell, I guess I just wanted to see you again. I know it’s not very theological or anything like that, but --” and he just shrugs.  
  
“Even—after everything?”  
  
“I think I’d rather have you—no matter the past.”  
  
“Hey! Stop lallygagging—we got an apocalypse to avert, shit to set right,” Jo says.  
  
Gordon and Uriel are already at the head of their army—because, yeah, it was no use calling it anything other than that—waiting.  
  
Dean, hand heavy on Cas’s head, breaths deep, squares his shoulders.  
  
Then they say, angels and men and monsters and humans together, “Let’s get to work.” **  
**

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank Lauren, my beta, for looking this over for me; for Lena for creatively giving and taking with me, and for my tumblr friends who encouraged me throughout this endeavor.
> 
> You guys are great. 
> 
> Inspirational [Not Fic](http://crowleyshouseparty.tumblr.com/tagged/calvin%20and%20hobbes%20dean%20and%20tigerstiel%20au) for your perusing pleasure.


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